Myra was worried that she’d never get married.
She wondered if she was doing something wrong and that’s why she was still single.
“I started to question myself: am I just being too picky? Am I not going out enough to meet people? What if I never find the right man? What if I am not called to the married life?"
She recalls telling her family, “I just don’t think I am ever going to get married.”
Myra, 26, says she felt discouraged, but at the same time, she felt close to God. “I just focused on praying and asking for the right man to come into my life. I felt God saying to me that the man for me is going to come at the right time when I least expect it.”
She met Joe, 27, on CatholicMatch the very end of 2015. Myra thought that she had canceled her membership, but it turned out that she was still a member. When she received a message from Joe, she couldn’t get over how cute he was and how he took the time to ask her questions about herself. Unlike the other members who sent her messages, Joe appeared to have read her profile carefully and that impressed her.
Myra wondered if this could be the man she had been praying for. After five months of Skype dates, she had to meet him in person!
In May of 2016, after five months of Skyping, Myra didn’t want to wait a month longer to meet Joe in person. She flew from California to Iowa to confirm what she was feeling was real.
“I wanted to know what I was feeling was true, so I could continue on with the relationship we were building or let it go if it wasn’t real."
Seeing Joe face to face, she was pretty sure she had found the man of her dreams. “When we met, I was like, ‘Thank you, God, this is the man I’ve been praying for.’ I felt like I’d always known him.”
Joe thought the same. “I’d never felt anything about anyone like I felt about her when I first met her,” Joe, 29, says.
Despite the tide of emotions, he tried to slow himself down. “With my emotions, I just wanted to jump in, but I knew that I needed to dedicate this to prayer—prayer individually and with Myra—to discern what God wanted for us.”
Joe and Myra continued to get to know one another better by having daily Skype dates and seeing each other in person for one long weekend each month.
Their long-distance dates became even more elaborate and hilarious.
The couple took their Skype dates to a whole new level. “We would dress up like we were on a real date; have a glass of wine and a nice dinner that we both made, and sometimes we’d watch movies together,” she shares.
Other times, they would do something zany like have a fashion show. “I have all of these fedoras so one night we had this little fashion show just for the fun it,” Joe laughs. “I’d show Myra different fedoras, and then I’d go away from the camera a few minutes and put on a different fedora or suit. It was a lot of fun for both of us.”
Was it a break-up or a proposal?
By September of 2016, Joe knew for sure that he would ask Myra to be his wife, but he waited until November to propose. Joe—knowing that Myra would appreciate a quiet proposal rather than a Disney fantasy
proposal—had plans to recreate their first date. On that date, he had taken her on a walk around Des Moines’s downtown and through the Sculpture Garden. They would do that again, but this time he’d ask Myra to be his wife.
“I wanted to be spontaneous though. I found the amphitheater downtown by the river, and it had this single ring of light above it. There was nobody around, so it was perfect timing. I took her up there, and I asked her, “How do you like being my girlfriend?”
Myra didn’t know what Joe was asking her. Wondering if he was going to break up with her, she replied hesitantly, “How do you feel about me?”
She noticed that Joe wasn’t as talkative as usual. “It made me wonder if he wasn’t happy with me,” she recalls.
Joe quickly dispelled her fears and replied, “How would you feel about being my fiancé?”
This caused Myra to take a step back from Joe as she tried to digest what he was saying to her.
Then Joe got down on one knee and asked Myra, who was beaming ear to ear, to marry him. She had been waiting for Joe to propose; even so, he caught her off guard. “It was perfect timing for a proposal,” she thinks.
The wedding ceremony included an ancient tradition that centers on including the Cross of Christ in all parts of their marriage and life.
On August 12th, 2017, the couple was wed at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in California. “Seeing Myra walk down the aisle, I had the feeling of peace and absolute joy. There was no hesitation,” Joe remembers.
In addition to Hispanic traditions, such as the lazo—or lasso—and las arras—box of coins, the couple included the Cross of Christ custom, which originated in Siroki-Brijeg, Herzegovina, a town where there have been no recorded divorces.
“After the blessing of the rings, we put our hands on the crucifix and the priest took his stole and wrapped our hands together around the cross,” Joe explains. “Then he gave us a special priestly blessing.”
He continues, “We have the crucifix up in our room, and it reminds us of our beautiful wedding day and our vows to each other. It is the focal point of our prayer life. In times of joy and times of sorrow, we always go together to pray before that cross. Eventually, God willing, our kids will all pray before that crucifix.”
