One day in January 2009, Ronee received a call from her mother-in-law. Her husband, Chris, whom she had married less than a year previously, had been struck by a sudden seizure on his way home from work. Fortunately, he had escaped any serious injury, but he was now in the hospital with temporary memory loss, the only thing he could remember was his old home phone number.
Chris had always suffered from epilepsy, but at the time he had not had a seizure in over ten years. It was not to be his last. Nor was this frightening health development the only challenge the couple faced their first year of marriage.
Just about the time of their first anniversary, both found themselves laid off and obliged to move in with Ronėe’s parents. Worst of all, they were struggling to conceive a child.
But the prayer says for better or worse, and Ronėe and Chris knew early on that, whatever hardships life threw at them, they would be facing them together.
It all started when...
Not too early on, though: before they met, Chris, then 29, tried three times to contact Ronėe, who was then just shy of 27, on CatholicMatch before she checked his profile.
The thing was, Chris was living in Pensacola, Florida, at the time, and Ronėe wasn’t interested in anyone outside the vicinity of western Pennsylvania where her family was from.
So, she ignored his first two attempts at contact.
His third message read “Hi, I see you’re from Western PA, so am I!”
Fancy that.
I finally took a look
Prompted by this revelation to take a closer look at his profile, she found she liked what she saw. “I thought he was cute,” she said. “A little nerdy, but cute.” They began exchanging messages through CatholicMatch. Then through private email. Before long they were spending three or four hours a night talking on the phone. They drew up lists of questions to get to know each other better, and the more they learned, the more they liked one another. Both had dated before and knew what they were looking for, and they could tell that this was something special.
The next step was to meet. As it happened, both would be in Pennsylvania for Christmas that year (2006), and so made arrangements for Ronėe to come over a couple days after the holiday to meet him and his family.
Ronėe was a little hesitant about that. She wanted to meet him, of course, but the idea of meeting his entire family at the same time seemed a bit much. She asked to meet somewhere else first, but Chris promised her that he would be the first one she saw.
The first meeting...
She arrived a little early and spent the time walking about a Wal-Mart, where she played true to her Italian-Polish heritage by buying a tray of cookies. As she drove up the long drive to his house, she grew more and more nervous.
Then, as she parked, Chris came out to meet her. She got out with her tray of cookies, looked at him, and all at once her nerves disappeared.
The dinner was perfect, the family gracious, and Chris and Ronėe ended up talking until one-thirty in the morning. Before she left, they shared their first kiss in front of the Christmas tree.
After leaving the house, Ronėe discovered that she had left her cell-phone in the car the whole time, and that her mother and grandmother had been trying to call for hours. She called her mother and announced “I just had a wonderful night and met the man I’m going to marry!” Her mother, pleased that she was yet among the living and not dead in a snowdrift, answered “That’s good, now call your grandmother and tell her you’re okay.”
Easter is too far away
Chris and Ronėe soon returned to their respective jobs, but soon made plans to meet again at Easter. In the meantime they continued their relationship over the phone and e-mail, both falling more and more in love. It reached the point that Chris confided to a friend that “I don’t think I can wait until April to see her again.” His friend jokingly suggested he invite her down for Valentine’s Day. Chris, with a proper lover’s lack of sarcasm, did just that.
Their second meeting was as magical as the first. Chris, though he’d been ‘smitten’ by her the moment he saw her in his parents’ driveway, was now convinced that she was the one. Ronėe, for her part, had begun to practice signing with his surname.
Though they were soon convinced that they would be married, it took him a little time to find the right moment to propose; so much so that Ronėe began to get annoyed. It was after her brother’s wedding, when they were preparing to leave the hotel, that Chris went down on his knees to look for some ‘papers’ his mother had left in the room…and came up with a ring.
Ten years and counting!
They were married on July 12, 2008 in Chris’s home parish, two good friends presiding.
It was less than a year later that Chris’s epilepsy returned, and sooner that they found an even more troubling problem: Ronėe had a condition (PCOS) that made it extremely difficult for her to conceive.
Month after month, for nearly ten years, they hoped and tried and waited, without success. No baby was forthcoming to bless their union. The desire and the struggle was hard on them, especially with Ronėe’s siblings getting married and becoming parents around them seemingly without any trouble.
But, hard as it is, they remain hopeful, and are considering adopting.
“You can’t be sad and let that dictate your life,” Ronėe said. “You have to stay positive because, after a while, it gets to you and you realize you can’t live like that.”
Despite the difficulties of health, lost jobs, and infertility, Ronėe and Chris remain committed to one another. They knew early on that they were meant to be together, and they married knowing that God would help them through whatever troubles came there way.
They were right on both counts.
