Sarah and Matt were less than enthusiastic about the whole idea of online dating, even with their mothers prompting them to look into CatholicMatch. Out of curiosity, Sarah created a free account in 2008 to see if she’d get any bites—“If I received a message from someone I was interested in. then I would…become a member and pursue it further.” After several months she gave up.
The problems of dating and meeting people who shared her Catholic faith and values weren’t getting any easier for Sarah over the next two years though, and a friend began to encourage her to try the online dating world more seriously. The 29-year-old from Kansas City opted for a free dating site. “It didn’t take me long to realize that you get what you pay for…I wanted a guy who had morals…,” she recalled. She re-activated her CatholicMatch account. This was at the outset of November 2010 and Sarah committed herself to a one-month subscription.
Matt was also from Kansas City and had heeded the maternal promptings to join CatholicMatch. Midway through November, he was truly Number One—on Sarah’s match list that is. “His smile caught my eye immediately,” Sarah told CatholicMatch. And while his visual presentation was attractive, even more so was his fidelity to the seven core Catholic teachings asked about in his profile. By the start of December, he and Sarah were off to their first date.
The 26-year-old Matt went all-out for the get-together at a local restaurant. He met Sarah there with a bouquet of flowers, and the sweetness of the gesture left her speechless—“a hard thing to do!”, as she later put it. Two hours of dinner conversation and walking around taking in the Christmas lights left Sarah convinced she wanted to spend more time with Matt, and he felt the same way. Before 2010 was out, they were officially an exclusive couple.
Sarah and Matt shared much more than Faith in common—right down to the instruments they played in band to the cars they drive. Compatibility existed on every level, and she grew to love his sense of humor and chivalrous nature. Over the next two months they literally spent almost every day together and they knew all they had in common was hardly a coincidence. God was telling them something. They listened.
In mid-February, the couple began to broach the subject of marriage. By April, Matt had proposed and this past October 8 they were married.
It’s safe to say that neither Sarah nor Matt are online dating skeptics anymore. She feared there was stigma attached to those who pursued that route, but instead of a stigma, they both instead landed the person they had been praying for their whole life.
The classic Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma, set in the early 20th century, has a song about how “everything’s up to date in Kansas City.” With two more believes in online dating—and most importantly, another happy Catholic marriage resulting from it, it’s a little more up to date again today thanks to Sarah and Matt. They overcame their doubts, and risked a little to gain a lot.
