The romance started for Nik, 34, and Diane, 42, on Valentines Day of 2014. “I had previously been on two other sites with some activity,” said Diane. “I had thought that a man being Christian would be enough after having a difficult time finding a good Catholic man in my hometown. However, I realized that, in my heart of hearts, he had to be Catholic. That was a deal-breaker.”
She decided to give CatholicMatch another shot on Valentine's Day. Within one hour of reactivating her CatholicMatch account, Diane got a message from Nik. “I had checked out his profile, and it was unlike any profile I had ever read before,” she said. “It was almost too good to be true. As I read through it, his words struck such a chord with me. It was as if he had written it with me in mind all along. I had to see what this man was about.”
Nik was not taking any chances with who he met on CatholicMatch. He was looking for specific answers based on what he wanted in a woman. And of course, she had to like hockey. Nik works at West Point Military Academy doing broadcasting for sports games, so his busy schedule kept the two of them from meeting until March 22, 2014. With Diane being two and a half hours away in Johnson City, New York, the relationship was going to be long distance.
Nik was feeling torn at the time. He had been speaking to another woman named Sarah, whom he also met on CatholicMatch, and he was still getting to know Diane. “Nik and I were still getting to know each other, and were by no means a couple,” Diane said. She visited Nik and he realized he had a very difficult decision to make.
“The weekend after Diane’s first visit, I worked the Army baseball team’s playoff series at West Point,” Nik remembered. “Even in the midst of a must-win environment, I found myself able to relax and think about how I wanted this to end. At some point, I looked down the third base side of the stadium where Diane sat the previous week. It must have happened during a commercial break because I spent at least 30 seconds staring into space.
And suddenly God made the decision for me. He said, ‘Pick Diane. Who else could stomach sitting through a 15-3 game like she did last week?’”
The two support each other in their careers and “crazy schedules.”
“I cannot begin to describe how much it means to me that Nik has embraced my hometown,” said Diane. “The event I’m responsible for over Labor Day weekend is my baby, and he did not hesitate to jump right in and help wherever he could. It is very difficult in this day and age to find people willing to donate even just a few hours of their time for an event, and here was this man who was at my side all four days. To me, that speaks volumes of his dedication.”
That summer, Nik followed Diane everywhere in Broome County, New York. When the season started for him at West Point, Diane would follow him around the Northeast. “On weekends where the hockey team had home games, Diane drove to where I lived near West Point and she would accompany me to the rink,” Nik said. “For road games, either she would drive to me and then we’d continue on together—or I would drive to Binghamton and she would drive me the rest of the way. It played out that way for the first half of the season, and we had a very strong relationship in time for Christmas.”
Exactly one year after first communicating on CatholicMatch, the two took a trip to Niagara falls. “It was an incredible way to start Valentine’s Day, standing at the frozen falls at 1 a.m. I felt like the luckiest woman in the world,” said Diane.
This was not their first trip to Niagara Falls—a place they believe will be a honeymoon spot. Nik proposed on Saturday, March 7 after a hectic weekend traveling with Diane in Connecticut for a hockey game. Diane helped Nik through the beginning of long few days and the initial work that needed to be done at the rink went much smoother than expected. "When Diane and I walked out of there much earlier than I thought we would, I looked at her and called it a sign from God," Nik said.
At the hotel, the clerk assumed they were married. "And I had to say, ‘No, not yet, but I feel like we’re getting close,'" Nik remembered.
Soon after, another surprise happened—Nik got a message from his Dad that a new nephew was born. "It was the last thing I expected to have happen," said Nik.
Nik saw it as a sign from God. "There were several signs over the course of that weekend that indicated to me that we should have married a long time ago. I just stared Diane down and asked her to marry me."
The day Nik proposed was one of the happiest days of Diane’s life. “When he first started describing what amounted to his dream scenario for our wedding, I instantly said, ‘Yes, I want that, too.’”
As the moment was so spontaneous, Nik didn't have a ring prepared. But he promised Diane they would take care of that when the trip was over.
The ring is now on her finger and they are ready to start planning the wedding, which they have big plans for.
They haven’t set a date yet, but they aren't worried about it.
“Because of my faith combined with Nik’s, I know that there is nothing that we can’t handle together,” said Diane.
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