We'd Resigned Ourselves to Being Single Forever

6

On March 6th, Randy and Julie began messaging on CatholicMatch.

And 68 days later they were engaged. No one was more surprised by this than them. “We’d resigned ourselves to living the rest of our lives as single,” Julie, 54, explains.

That all changed when Randy chose to answer Julie’s questionnaire on her profile. “Because she lived nearby and because of her questionnaire our relationship began,” Randy, 52, adds.

Julie wasn’t actively using CatholicMatch when Randy messaged her, so she was surprised to hear from him. “The funny thing is, I don’t ever remember creating the questionnaire,” she laughs.

He didn’t mind playing 20 questions. 

Randy liked to answer questions and Julie liked to ask them, so they hit it off right away.

“Two days after he messaged me, we talked for two weeks on the telephone,” she shares. “We talked on and off during the day for five or six and sometimes eight hours. Literally every time we spoke, I was ready to shoot him 20 to 50 questions.”

Both from Iowa, Randy and Julie discovered that they lived only 15 miles apart when they were growing up. “We roller skated at the same roller rink when we were kids,” she says.

Since her husband died six years ago, Julie had been alone. She learned that Randy had also been alone for more than six years since his annulment. Like her, he had children and grandchildren.

Randy didn’t do all of the talking; in their conversations, he learned plenty about Julie. He found out that Julie was very athletic and that she’d played basketball and softball in high school.

She also shared with Randy how she’d never been beaten in leg wrestling—she could even beat her six-foot-four brother.

That sounded like a challenge to Randy.

Wow, so you are real!

When Randy drove his pickup truck into Julie’s driveway, she—with confidence in her heart that he was the one—walked out to meet him. “I put my hands on both sides of Randy’s face, and I said, ‘You are real,’” she recalls.

In this serious moment,  Randy said to her, "So do you want to get the leg wrestling out of the way then?”

Julie replied, “No! Maybe another time.”

On the second date, Randy got his chance to leg wrestle Julie. “She beat me. She crushed me!” he admits.

This was all I had ever wanted.

It was in the wee hours of the morning, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, that Randy proposed to Julie. Once a month, Randy did Adoration from 1:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. Julie drove an hour to join him. After praying awhile, they stood up in the chapel. He got down on one knee and asked, “Will you marry me and love God first and then me?” Julie recalls.

“And I said, ‘Yes and yes.’”

She adds, “I was overwhelmed and very thankful that God was placed first when he asked me because all I ever really wanted was someone to love God as much as I did.”

The world is confused when it comes to sex and marriage.

Randy and Julie recall how their dating and engagement was such a beautiful and blessed time. “We remained chaste the whole time,” he adds.

“A day or two before meeting Randy, during a parish mission, I had made a vow—no more kissing frogs” she says. “I really wanted to be pure and holy. We’d both made a commitment to God that we were going to be chaste. Maybe we weren’t in the past with other relationships, but this time it was different for us.”

Randy, a Catholic convert, adds, “I've been out in the world. By the third date, you’re supposed to be having relations already, right? That world is a really shallow place. Everyone thinks they've got to live together for three, four, or five years before marriage—and possibly never get married. That's where the world is messed up because there's not enough sacredness in what it actually means to be man and wife—it's all confused.”

On June 30th, 2018—after marriage preparation meetings with their priest—Julie’s parents walked her down the aisle. Both Randy and Julie say that they are glad they remained pure in their dating relationship and that it made a difference. She says she loves Randy all the more for the respect he showed her during their dating relationship.

“Being chaste is one of the biggest things a man can do,” she thinks.

Would you change anything?

When I interviewed Randy and Julie, I asked them whether their relationship happened too fast for them in retrospect. They thought that the timing was perfect for them.

“We joke that we've been together nine years rather than nine months because we know each other so well,” he says.

She adds, “I wouldn't do anything different—not at all.”

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