What’s better than a CatholicMatch success story?
A triple threat CatholicMatch success story!
Sisters Morgan, Samara, and Cadence have all met their spouses on CatholicMatch within three years! What’s crazier is how each relationship was long-distance, with a total of two and a half thousand miles between the three couples.
It all started like this…
Morgan, Samara, and Cadence are the three oldest sisters in a big Catholic family. They all lived at home with their parents and other six siblings, working as a dietitian, a nurse, and a teacher respectively. It was a loud, crazy, loving home! However, despite having friends and active lives, none of the sisters had much luck dating in local circles or at work.
So Morgan, the eldest at age 23, joined CatholicMatch in 2016. Jedidiah, a 25-year-old on/off CatholicMatch member, soon messaged her with a Princess Bride reference. (How can you go wrong with that?) They soon met up while he was home in Minnesota for the summer and went hiking together on a local trail. Jed realized he’d seen Morgan and her sisters a few years prior at the local diocesan conference--he hadn’t approached them because at the time, he had yet to discern out of seminary!
Morgan doubted she’d see him again when he returned back to Florida for law school, well over a thousand miles away. Jed had other plans. He began flying back to Minnesota on each school break to spend more time with Morgan, who brought him to meet her family.
“My first thought was, wow, she brought home a German giant!” Cadence recalls.
All six foot three inches of Jed might have been a surprise, but he softened the impression by playing with the family’s new litter of kittens. Within a few months, Jed attended their extended family Christmas and planned to spend the coming summer in the area with Morgan.
Meanwhile, Cadence, then age 21, joined CatholicMatch November of 2016. That very first day, Christopher, then age 26, messaged her from his home in Kentucky. Because of the 700 miles between them, Cadence quickly relegated him to the friend zone. (We’ve all heard that before…)
The two continued talking until March of 2017, when Chris drove ten hours to meet Cadence in person. Armed with Celtic calligraphy and a staunch refusal to take no for an answer, he successfully broke free of the friend zone! He and Cadence agreed to start dating for real before he returned home to Kentucky, to return monthly for visits.
Fast forward to Jed’s summer break of 2017. He spent most of his time at Morgan’s house while secretly planning a proposal. He texted Samara to get sisterly approval for ring ideas, and Samara was so excited, she woke up Cadence to tell her the news. Cadence merely asked to go back to sleep, because it was one in the morning.
That July, Jed proposed to Morgan on the site of their first date and she excitedly agreed. During their long distance engagement, to pay for a plane ticket to visit his beloved, Jed sold his left-handed bagpipes to a gentleman named Pedro in New York. (If that’s not love, what is?)
One sister down, two to go.
That November of 2017, Christopher made the brave move from Kentucky to Minnesota while attending online grad school for special education and behavior analysis. Soon after he moved, he took a break from homework to participate in Jed’s attempt to introduce Morgan’s siblings to Dungeons and Dragons.
“To be fair, we warned him we’re terrible at following rules,” Samara says. This attempt went over so spectacularly wrong that both Jed and Chris forbade Cadence and Samara from joining in any further D&D games. The group tried an escape room instead and won, despite the sisters’ unsuccessful tries to pick locks and climb out windows. (Yes, this was an improvement over D&D.)
The new year came and in January of 2018, in the church where they’d first met in person, Christopher presented Cadence with a ring and an important question. Cadence almost blacked out but thankfully remembered to nod in acceptance.
Two for three.
Samara had been a member of CatholicMatch since 2016, and in 2018 at age 23, began talking to a resident doctor over two hundred miles away in Iowa. Soon after, she began talking to a man named Derek, then 28, who also was a resident doctor… in Iowa… in the very same hospital. In a couple of weeks, she realized that Derek and the other gentleman were roommates!
“If something awkward is going to happen, it’s going to happen to me!” Samara laughs.
“We had an understanding of ‘may the best man win’,” Derek recalls about the friendly competition with his roommate.
After Derek’s wonderful first date with Samara in June of 2018, the contest came to a clear end. Samara and Derek began dating as often as he had a weekend off from his intense hospital rounds.
“I call it ‘residistance,’ because the residency is what keeps them from seeing each other more often,” Cadence explains.
Then Morgan and Jedidiah’s nuptials arrived!
August 4th brought the big day alongside some big problems. The hairdresser ran late, rain halted outdoor photos, and the priest was two hours late due to a car crash. The wedding went smoothly anyway, with over 180 guests and siblings playing music throughout. The two honeymooned in Ireland before returning home to wait for Jed's bar examination results and apply for jobs.
Cadence and Chris, meanwhile, experienced some unexpected culture shock as Chris settled in to Minnesota life.
“I took him to a ballroom dance with my friend group, and he got bewildered when I danced with my guy friends,” Cadence remembers. “Apparently in Kentucky, people don’t waltz with anyone besides their significant other! But I will always tango with Morgan...”
Another confusion involved look-alike siblings.
Cadence and Morgan and another younger sister all closely resemble each other, and Chris looks similar to their brother. This not only confused extended relatives and the priest, but even the fiances themselves!
“There’ve been a couple close calls where I almost wrapped my arms around the wrong sister,” Chris explains. He and Cadence loved sharing stories about their work with special needs children as he graduated and began his behavioral therapy internship.
January 2019 marked their wedding date, but under a strange set of circumstances, the bride missed her own wedding! They rescheduled later in January. The second go round was successful, but the Minnesota winter dictated an unusual honeymoon.
“We spent our honeymoon completely snowed in at our apartment, and my college-aged siblings who usually drove to school stayed over with us to attend class safely,” Cadence remembers.
Meanwhile, the medical duo Derek and Samara garnered the reputation of getting lost. On one particular date, they decided to visit a secondhand bookstore. They parked their car and walked around the block looking for it, only to discover they’d parked directly in front of the little shop to start with.
Derek continued this trend with his surprise proposal in October of 2019.
At a beautiful misty rose garden by a lake, he gave a romantic speech, and Samara cried “yes!” before he was even able to present the ring. Later, he informed the family how he’d proposed on Garvin Heights, but then discovered the rose garden was nowhere close to said park! These two plan to wed in June of 2020, and Samara will move to Iowa to be with Derek as he finishes his last year of residency.
“Our husbands’ jobs sound like the start of a bad joke,” Morgan laughs. “A doctor, a lawyer, and a therapist walk into a bar…”
What has newlywed life looked like for the other two sisters? Morgan and Jed have moved four times, with that many job changes, before coming back to the area to stay. Cadence and Chris dealt with a different surprise—their first child is due near their first anniversary. What advice do they have for the third sister and her soon-to-be husband?
“Go into marriage with hopes and goals but NO expectations—God will take you on adventures you don’t see coming!” Morgan says.
“I think everyone needs to watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding as an orientation when they get engaged to any of these siblings,” Chris advises.
With crazy escape room antics, doppleganger siblings, and family honeymoons, anyone joining this group is in for a bit of a learning curve. But what’s better than a tight knit family, true love, and starting new lives together? That’s pretty hard to beat!
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