After one year as a widow, Mary Anne discovered CatholicMatch.
“I was still weeping a lot and mostly staying at home,” she says, describing the pain of losing a spouse after 50 years of happy marriage together. But God wasn’t done with Mary Anne and marriage yet.
At dinner with friends one night, Mary Anne listened to her single gal pal talk about dating on a non-religious dating site, complaining about the lack of good matches. Mary Anne didn’t like the idea of that particular website, but the concept of meeting someone online certainly appealed to her.
“I needed at least one good male friend in my life!” she says. She knew the importance of grieving for the loss of a loved one, but recognized it was time to think about what she wanted to do with her future. So when she arrived home, she began to Google different dating sites and ended up right here.
“[CatholicMatch] sounded perfect for me. Just maybe there was a local Catholic widowed man looking for a mature bride,” she pondered. (Mary Anne was 77 years old at the time.) Though she had concerns about negative connotations, she put stock in the stories she’d heard of young, faithful people meeting spouses online. After all, she thought, dating is for finding a mate, which was what she wanted.
So in August of 2017, she created her profile.
She was on CatholicMatch for two days before John (age 74) found her. Also a Florida native, he thought Mary Anne looked like a conservative Catholic woman who’d already proven her stability in married life. As for Mary Anne, she was initially attracted to John’s honesty and knowledge about an amazing number of topics.
For instance, John loves water travel and even built his own boat. “I like the idea of boating, but I can barely get on or off one!” Mary Anne says. But she liked John’s message so much, she sent him her telephone number and email immediately.
Despite CatholicMatch’s automatic warning about the dangers of giving out personal information too soon, (which Mary Anne appreciated seeing on a dating site!), she felt safe to send her information to John anyway, and trusted that feeling to move forward.
John called her right away, and the two began chatting by phone frequently.
Their pace slowed a little at this point. John attributes this to doubts cropping up about whether or not he really wanted to remarry this late in life. Just like Mary Anne, John had experienced the devastating loss of his spouse.
He and his first wife had been married for 38 years, and John had spent the last eight years a widower, grieving and wondering what he should do next. Naturally, he was a little unsure of what to do when Mary Anne came along!
After several weeks of phone calls, John pushed aside his doubts. How would he know what to do unless he met Mary Anne in person? So the two set up a first date: attending a Latin Mass at his parish. They were both excited to meet each other, and John especially wanted to see what she thought of his church.
“It had been years since I had attended a Mass in Latin, and I was wondering what I should wear!” Mary Anne laughs. During that Mass, they felt like a real couple. Nothing was said between them, but they both knew there would be a second date. They went on to attend Mass every week together!
Do you ever get into a habit so deep, you do it even on the wrong day of the week?
One of their fond (and funny!) memories of dating happened one Saturday afternoon. Mary Anne received a surprise call from John, who was on his way over to take her out. She was at the bank, and told him to meet her at her condo complex in 30 minutes.
When she arrived home, she found John was all dressed up while she was in jeans. They talked for a few minutes before John discovered it was only Saturday. “Mass was the following evening!” Mary Anne laughs. Well, he might have been confused about the date, but she couldn’t doubt his faithfulness if she tried!
The couple’s eighty-eight years of combined marriage experience led them to learn, doubtlessly, that they wanted do another marriage--together. Practicality and simplicity was the order of the proposal: John simply said, “Let's go buy you an engagement ring!”
Mary Anne wasted no time picking her favorite ring to officialize their intentions. She wondered what kind of wedding they should have, as seniors. “What will I wear? What does every other 77 year old bride wear?!” she laughs.
They were married at Our Lady of Peace Chapel in Boynton Beach, Florida on November 12th. The wedding was beautiful, complete with a full guest list of children, grandchildren, and friends.
They found out that most of their fellow church members assumed they were already married! “Some of our friends didn't understand why we didn't just move in together,” the couple adds. They were happy to be a living example of how God wants couples to approach marriage as a holy Sacrament, no matter their stage or age.
“We still joke that we were married on the 12th of Never. Who would have ever thought this could happen for us?!” they say. John and Mary Anne are living proof that it’s never too late; love has no time stamp!
