In November of 2017, aware that she wasn’t having any success meeting potential boyfriends locally in North Dakota, Laura’s mom encouraged her to sign up for CatholicMatch.
Laura was already familiar with CM because during college several years previous she and her best friend set up an account for their mutual best friend. According to Laura, she ultimately joined CatholicMatch “out of spite” to prove her Mom wrong “and because there was a Black Friday sale.” There’s an old adage that “Mother knows best,” and Laura shared “Little did I know that only a month later, I would start talking to my husband.”
They had both previously discerned religious life/priesthood...
Laura was intrigued when she read through Tucker’s profile in December of that same year and saw that he had formerly been a seminarian. She herself had seriously discerned religious life and went on a Spring Break Retreat during college with the Sisters of Life.
Besides their shared commitment to openness to God’s will and plan for their lives, Laura saw that they also both enjoyed hiking. These commonalities were enough for her to look past Tucker’s profile picture, which was “not very attractive.” She messaged him just after Christmas, and within a few days, he responded.
For his part, he liked that one of her profile pictures was her with a religious sister in full habit. He was also interested to learn more about her experience growing up on a farm. After a month and a half of exchanging progressively longer messages, which Laura’s brother joked were more like books, the two made plans to meet in person.
Their first date was not a resounding success!
While Tucker was living in South Dakota and Laura was from North Dakota, they met at a halfway point in a small Minnesota town on Laura’s drive back from a friend’s wedding in Minneapolis.
That first in-person encounter was less than ideal. Laura was feeling sick, which led her to be very quiet, and all the celebrating the night before left her with a hoarse voice. Tucker was put off by the rough sound of her voice.
Additionally, the Mass the couple found to attend together was in Spanish, which neither of them speaks (though they understood enough to realize that the homily was about marriage!). The date encompassed both lunch and supper, and Laura recognized that the odds were not in her favor when Tucker paid for lunch but asked to split the tab at supper!
All things work together for good.
On the drive home, Tucker told a friend, “She was nice, but I don’t think there will be a second date.” Though Tucker had planned to message her that he wasn’t interested, Laura asked him shortly after they met to pray for a family emergency that had arisen.
At that time, Tucker felt “Oh, no! I can’t do this now when she’s in the middle of this.” Instead, the couple started talking more and praying together. “When we started talking together and praying- obviously her voice sounded better- I really liked praying with her. I think that was what started it, that we started praying together and I realized ‘ok, I think I could go on another date with her.’”
Since Tucker had a friend who lived near Laura that he wanted to visit during spring break, he had an excuse to give dating a second shot. That second date went much better, and after the fourth date, around Easter of 2018, Laura asked Tucker to define the relationship.
From his perspective, he’d been taking things slowly following previous relationships in which he’d found that making a relationship official “really changed things.” But when she told him “At 1:44 in the morning, ‘I’m not going home until you tell me what this is,’” he responded by asking her to be his girlfriend.
His parents gave him surprising relationship advice...
The couple dated six hours long-distance for several months, praying and reading spiritual books together while apart and hiking, expressing their competitive natures through board games, and swing dancing when they were together.
Tucker finished his graduate certificate in museum studies and was thinking about moving to be close to Laura, but wondered if doing so would be “crazy” since they had only been together a few months. He was surprised, then, when his parents approached him one day and his mom said, “Your dad and I have been talking, and we think you should move to Bismarck.”
Tucker needed no further prompting, taking their suggestion as all the confirmation he needed to move in July of 2018.
He had to reschedule the proposal!
One month passed, and Tucker crafted a proposal plan that involved hiking and a local friend capturing the moment on camera. But when Laura heard about Tucker’s mysterious plan to “go hiking” with his friend (she realized they were going to scope out where the proposal should take place), she told her two best friends from college (the same ones she’d created the CatholicMatch profile for and with several years previous!) that she knew what was about to happen. Her friends, Liz and Morgan, called Tucker up and told him he had to change his plan!
Tucker moved the proposal date up by a day, and switched up the venue. As soon as Laura got home from work, Tucker told her “Let’s go for a walk [to the North Dakota State Capitol grounds]!”
Laura objected because it was 102 degrees on that August day, but Tucker was insistent! On the way, he asked her to pray the rosary, and she was again surprised that he was very specific about wanting to pray the second luminous mystery (the wedding feast at Cana), even though he usually let her pick. When they arrived at the Capitol grounds and walked through a shaded area of the park, Tucker stopped Laura and asked her to dance to the song that had been playing when he first told her he loved her. As they danced, he told her he’d created a new move, saying "It goes like this: you do this and this, and then the guy gets down on one knee." A surprised and elated Laura said “YES!” and the couple shared their first kiss.
Spiritual prep for the big day...
The couple was married on May 25th, 2019. Laura summarized, “It was magical!” The night before the wedding, Tucker and Laura extended an invitation to their entire wedding party to join them for evening prayers, Adoration, and an opportunity to go to Confession. Tucker smiled remembering that during the wedding Mass “the priest was very excited that we wanted to use incense!”
Advice for singles considering online dating:
Tucker and Laura both advised other singles considering signing up for CatholicMatch, “You have nothing to lose, and possibly everything to gain! Also, realize the first date might not always be magical, so don't write someone off right away and give them a second chance!
If Tucker didn't give Laura a second chance we wouldn't have been married and had our two beautiful daughters.”
Author’s Note: Laura’s best friends Morgan and Liz ALSO met their spouses on CatholicMatch!
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