Denise and Bill both experienced bad first marriages, and they assumed that they'd never remarry.
Denise’s first husband abandoned her, leaving her to raise their triplet daughters. “Their father left when they were five, and I devoted everything to them. I never dated,” she reveals.
When her daughters began college, so did Denise at the age of 50. “It was time for me to start my life, but I didn't know how to do that,” recollects the 57-year-old, who has an annulled first marriage.
Her friends recommended that she try a dating website. “I was terrified to do that!” she shares. “CatholicMatch advertised in my church bulletin, and I felt it was safe.”
She took the plunge in 2011.
A quick response led to a long relationship.
Within a couple of days of creating her profile on CatholicMatch, Bill—who also has an annulled first marriage—contacted Denise.
“When I saw Denise’s profile, it intrigued me. I’d find myself going back to look at it again and again. I thought, 'I’d better get in touch with this lady.'”
Bill liked that Denise talked a lot about her family, but he admits it was her smile that really caught his eye. “She had the prettiest smile that I’d ever seen. I just had to meet her,” says the 66-year-old father of four.
Bill didn’t have to travel far. He discovered that Denise lived just 14 miles from his home. After their first lunch date, the couple hit it off, and they became inseparable. They found they had a lot in common especially since she had raised triplets, and he'd raised a set of twins.
What's your definition of whirlwind?
Denise calls her relationship with Bill a “whirlwind romance," but they actually dated for six years!
When I bluntly asked Bill why it took him so long to propose, Denise was laughing giddily in the background. She knew she had someone sympathetic to her situation.
Bill says, “I didn’t feel motivated to make a move. I also felt gun shy because my first marriage turned out so badly.”
First comes the ultimatum.
Denise recalls that one day in October 2016, she and Bill were sitting on his porch swing when she told him that she was tired of waiting for him to make a move.
Bill was stunned by her ultimatum. He sat there for 20 minutes without uttering a word.
“I was like, ‘Why are you so quiet?’" she recalls. “I was ready to get up and walk off the porch and walk away because he wasn't giving me any answers. I thought, ‘We've been together five years, and you're not making any moves. I'm still young enough that I can move on.’”
Bill treated Denise like a queen and she loved him deeply, but she needed a commitment of marriage or she would have to end the relationship.
Finally, after the prolonged silence, Bill pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and showed Denise a picture of a ring. Her jaw nearly dropped to the floor.
Bill recalls telling her, "I wasn’t going to do this right now, but I've been looking at this ring."
“He asked me right then and there to marry him,” remembers Denise
Bill revealed that he had originally planned to ask Denise to marry him around Christmas because her birthday is in December. Laughing, he shares that he decided to move a little faster after her speech.
Denise adds, “I was shocked. For years prior, he said he would never get married again. At first, I wasn't sure that I wanted to get married again either. As the years went on, I knew I wanted to be with him.”
[click_to_tweet tweet="I was ready to get up and walk off the porch and walk away because he wasn't giving me any answers." quote="I was ready to get up and walk off the porch and walk away because he wasn't giving me any answers. " theme=""]
And then comes the real proposal.
A few weeks later the ring arrived.
“Denise was going to come over to my house, but then I got the ring. I r
aced over to her house before she could leave,” he recalls. “She said, ‘What are you doing here?' I said, ‘Come over here a minute.’ I took her in the backyard and on her back deck; I pulled the ring out, and I got down on my knee. That’s when I really asked her.”
Incoming...
On December 29th, 2018, they were married at Saint Bernadette's Church in Monroeville, Pennsylvania in front of their families.
“It was a small wedding—just forty guests—and the church was especially lovely because it was decorated for Christmas,” Bill shares.
Since their marriage, the couple says their relationship has been even more fulfilling. “This is what I imagined to marriage would be. I wanted a marriage like my parents have,” she says.
Bill adds, “Though every once in a while, I have to duck when I tell Denise, ‘You know, we should have got married much earlier.’”
