Being a single parent is difficult. Trying to date as a single parent is even harder.
Maureen and Gannon both know this all too well. Finally, after trying other dating apps with no success, Maureen signed up for CatholicMatch. She was looking for love and marriage, and for a good Catholic man to help raise her young daughter.
Gannon spent the past 8 years on CatholicMatch, but to no avail. A single dad with a son, he was looking for a good Catholic woman to raise a family with. One day, after coming across Maureen’s profile, he decided to send her a message. He was drawn in by her smile, her red hair, and the fact that she is also a single parent.
Maureen had only been online for three days when she got Gannon’s message.
Liking his smile and that he is a single parent, Maureen responded warmly to Gannon’s message. They began messaging back and forth on the site for a couple weeks before exchanging phone numbers.
It was April 2020, at the beginning of Covid, and therefore they had to hold off on an in-person meeting. They continued communicating via text, phone calls, and video chat for the next two months until finally meeting up in June.
By then, they were already falling for each other.
“Once we met it was like talking with someone you've known your whole life.”
Living about an hour apart from each other in the Houston area, Maureen and Gannon met up at an outdoor brewery for their first in-person date. After already having such a good connection from their two months of remote communication, they were hoping to connect just as easily in person.
Although they were both a little nervous initially, Maureen says, it was “the easiest date either of us have ever been on.”
From that first date, the relationship really took off. After meeting one another’s kids and having them meet each other, everyone soon became very attached. One day while watching a movie together, Maureen remembers trying to get up the nerve to tell Gannon that she loves him. As she started looking over at him to say it, he kept saying "yesss?" While going back and forth like this about seven times, finally she blurts out, "I love you!" After a pause that feels like eternity, Gannon responds, "I love you too." By September, they were already talking about marriage.
Maureen is very close to her parents, who helped raise her daughter in the first year of her life. When Gannon met her parents for the first time, it was a true affirmation of God’s hand in the relationship. Her father remarked to Gannon how “comforted, at ease, and happy” he was that Maureen’s daughter would have Gannon as a father figure.
“My mother told me he'll fit in perfectly with our family,” says Maureen.
A speedy engagement and a beautiful wedding.
On November 5, 2020, Gannon and Maureen planned to get some nice photos taken by her best friend. To Maureen’s surprise, right in the middle of the photo shoot, Gannon proposed! She said yes, and they quickly planned their wedding for that coming spring.
They decided on a short engagement because of already feeling so close to one another’s kids and each other. They spent their five-month engagement planning their wedding and spending time together as a family, “so the kids could start to see the stability that was to come.”
On April 10, 2021, Gannon and Maureen were joined in marriage at Annunciation Catholic Church, the oldest Catholic Church in Houston. They had a trumpet and string quartet play music while Maureen walked down the aisle. “The whole day was beautiful and full of love.”
And the family is growing!
After a fun adventure honeymoon in Key Largo, a month later Maureen and Gannon discovered that their new marriage had been blessed with a new life: Maureen was pregnant! In January 2022, they welcomed a baby boy.
While marriage always has its ups and downs, they are blessed to weather it together. The joy of conceiving a child early on in marriage was coupled with the difficulties of the pregnancy and a long and stressful childbirth. Raising a newborn, with all the exhaustion and stress that goes along with it, is hard but also so worth it. Their older children are overjoyed to have a baby brother! And, all the holidays and other memories together as a family are such a blessing.
Maureen and Gannon are so grateful for the story God is writing for their family. Maureen states: "In everything we do we keep God. We pray together, we discuss scripture and faith together and we make teaching our kids our faith a huge part of our daily life. God has been so good to us to bring us closer together and closer to Him through our love, marriage, and family.”
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