Lizzie and I first met during the opening retreat of ACE Teaching Fellows, the teaching program we both completed. She approached me during a volleyball game to ask me about the Mizzou shirt that I was wearing. After asking if I went to Mizzou (I said I did), she asked me verbatim, “So what’s your deal?” I laughed at the question before we launched into a conversation about our shared upbringing in Saint Louis.

Teaching different subjects and different grade levels in different parts of the country, we did not encounter each other much during our first year in the program (except to go bowling with another member of our cohort during Christmas break). However, before starting our second summer of course work in South Bend, we joined that same member of our cohort on a trip to Dave and Buster’s. It was while we were walking around the arcade that I started to admire Lizzie.

As the second session of classes began, we started spending more and more time together culminating in our first date at the beginning of July where we shared a pretzel and pints of Guinness at O'Rourke's. During that second summer, I grew to appreciate Lizzie’s courage which presented itself in many aspects of our life, such as suggesting an activity with a group of friends, engaging in what I can only call inspired dancing at ACE prom, and more generally in our relationship. The Lizzie I grew to know was so genuine and caring that it required almost no thought to start dating even as our second year of teaching was a week away from starting.

Over the next year, we made the most of our long distance relationship. Calling Lizzie on my way home from coaching water polo practice became a necessary part of my daily routine, and we eventually worked our way up to facetime call each other (through which we watched the Muppets 2015 show). We were able to see one another back in Saint Louis during extended school breaks, but we also made a habit of visiting each other. Lizzie visited me in California where we went skiing at Lake Tahoe and hiking in Yosemite, while I visited her in Texas where we relaxed on the Gulf coast and enjoyed the local cuisine. A few months into our relationship, I read a beautiful quote from St. John Chyrsostom about what husbands should say to their wives (CCC 2365), and I had the desire to say those words to Lizzie.

I began to form a general idea of when I might propose. I thought it would be a good idea to communicate that general feeling to Lizzie, so during our first Christmas together I told her that I was dating her with the intention of eventually marrying her one day. She found this concept agreeable. We knew that we would be returning to Saint Louis together at the end of our ACE commitment, so I thought that it would be a good thing for us to be dating in the same city for a while before I proposed; my original idea was to propose in November of 2024. However, when I traveled to Wisconsin for my friend Conner’s bachelor, I found myself texting Lizzie about hypotheticals for the bachelor party that would proceed our wedding. If we were talking about it as if it were a certainty, then I didn’t see any reason to wait until November like I originally thought.

I knew I had a few decisions to make. Lizzie and I both accepted opportunities to intern for ACE over the summer before returning to Saint Louis. On the way back to the Midwest before the internships started, we would be driving through Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, and Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Should I propose on campus at Notre Dame where Lizzie and I met and started dating? Should I propose at one of the National Parks on our road trip with nature’s majesty all around us? Should I propose in Saint Louis the place we both called home and would go on to call our new home?

I consider all of these before deciding to pursue none of them. I decided to take advantage of Lizzie’s interest in water parks by suggesting that we visit Holiday World and Spalshin’ Safari at the end of the summer. While that visit would have been amazing without a proposal, I was secretly planning to propose to Lizzie in Jasper, Indiana, my extended family’s hometown twenty-five minutes away from the amusement park. Having purchased a ring, informing a handful of people, and receiving the blessing of her parents, we stopped at St. Joseph’s church on the morning of Saturday July 27. During the mass, I was turning around in my head what I wanted to say to her and how it would formally change our lives forever. My parents, who have for many years been role models of Catholic spouses and parents, became engaged and married in that same church about 35 years before, and I pray that Lizzie and I have a marriage half as blessed as theirs.

I am excited to marry Lizzie because she is always ready for activity and even more ready to laugh. But I cannot wait to marry Lizzie because she wants to be a saint and already in our relationship she has helped me follow the Way in ways I did not think I was capable of. Viva Cristo Rey!

I’ll start in the middle. In the darkness of cosmic bowling alley in December of 2022, I was looking at a man across the table me and thought to myself “Why am I not in love with this person?” Thank goodness I acted on that thought!

Charlie and I met playing a game of yard volleyball at Notre Dame. Nothing catches my eye quite like a man in a Mizzou shirt, and I quickly yelled “What’s your deal?” to the man standing beside me. As it goes in St. Louis, the connections flooded in (and are still being revealed) as learned we grew up about 15 minutes apart from one another.

Our first summer came and went, and we busied ourselves with our new teaching lives. On that night of bowling, I paused to think about what things might become, and then I set it aside until the summer– when would be together again. Before heading back to Notre Dame, we went on our infamous tour de Dave and Buster’s. This time, I dressed a little cuter, laughed a little louder, and batted my eyelashes a little more… and what can I say? It worked!

Upon arriving on campus, it became obvious to our peers that there was a little something going on between us. Nights at Brothers’ Bar & Grill became glances of flirtation across the room, as did Judy Madden’s class. It all came to a head on July 3rd, when I spilled the beans to him after a game of Fortnite. It was a giddy conversation seated in lawn chairs in an un-airconditioned dorm room! I left that dorm room beaming with excitement of what this could become, and I took my friend Caroline to Olive Garden the next morning to spill every detail of the conversation over a pitcher of sangria.

The rest came easily enough, as I prayed it would. We spent the rest of the summer going on walks, playing video games, sitting beside one another at mass, and hitting all of the milestones of a new relationship. I will spare you the details of the first kiss! The first time we held hands! And when we made things ~official~ two days before the summer ended!! As the next few weeks unfolded, and then the following months, I discovered one of the things I love the most about Charlie. He is an impeccable communicator. The transition from maybe-having-a-thing with a boy in my cohort to envisioning a real life of long distance dating happened so quickly, and there was no doubt at the end of the summer that I wanted it all to continue. I just hoped and prayed that it would still be official when he returned from his discernment pilgrimage in Rome!!!

And it was. He gave me our first long distance phone call as he was in the Newark Airport, as I sat on the back swing of my porch. The phone calls (and eventual FaceTimes) were the core of the long distance journey, and it came and it went. While it STANK, it also brought us to wonderful places—Mexico, beaches, Tahoe, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Tetons, just to name a few– and I wouldn’t want to tell our story any other way. June came, and it was time to return to Notre Dame for a victory lap of a summer. It was a summer of growing closer, loving one another’s company up close, and learning how AWESOME it would be if we worked at the same place for our entire lives.

The summer ended, and we were going on a celebratory trip to see his grandparents and go to Holiday World in Jasper, IN. We did go to Holiday World, but I was NOT expecting to be going with a ROCK ON MY FINGER!!! Charlie pulled off the ultimate surprise as he proposed to a girl that had not washed her hair in days (because she was going to a water park) and peeled off her stick on nails the evening before. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. July 27, 2025, at St. Joseph Catholic Church—where his parents got engaged and married—he asked me if I would marry him. That moment, Charlie, the ring, the Church, his family, everything about him, truly is– in every sense of the word– a dream come true.

Thus, I am so blessed to be with a man who supports every little dream that I have the way that Charlie does. Whether it be starting out as an amateur photographer, drumming up a plan to go to Chile, or having a conversation about a less-than-normal baby name that he is kind enough to consider, he listens to me and loves the little dreams. The people who know me best know that being married, in love, and raising a family that follows Christ has been all that I truly dreamed of out of this life. To the man who supports my dreams and makes them come true– cheers to you, Charlie. :)