How He Asked | Catie + Angelo

We are honored by the opportunity to walk alongside you in this marriage ministry, from Yes to I Do and beyond, and we love returning to our couples' stories as they continue to unfold. If we've featured your love story in our How He Asked engagement series and you now feel called to share your wedding with us, as well, submission details can be found here.

Sometimes the path to the sacrament of marriage doesn’t look as straightforward as we imagine it should be, but the Lord can use any set of circumstances to bring spouses together.

Catie and Angelo’s relationship progressed through many stages before they were engaged. In an unexpected string of events, it wasn’t until Angelo had finally found peace in remaining “just friends” with Catie that she confessed still having feelings for him. 

She describes his proposal as an “intimate, prayerful, and perfect moment.” A moment worth waiting for.

In Catie’s Words: Angelo and I met while volunteering for our parish’s high school ministry. After a year of forming a casual friendship around youth group and swing dancing, he told me how he felt and asked me out to dinner.

In Angelo’s Words: I had feelings for Catie very early on in our friendship, but I held myself back because I had just come out of a low point in my life. I was still “finding myself” and didn’t need another impulse relationship; it would not have been fair to either of us. 

After a year of reconnecting to my faith, finding my place in youth ministry, and forming new relationships, I realized Catie was always there, intentional or otherwise. That summer, I finally agreed to go swing dancing with her. 

I was immediately hooked--both to dancing and to the idea of “Catie and I.” I couldn’t avoid it anymore, so I decided to tell her how I felt and asked her out to dinner.

Catie: I told Angelo that I saw us as strictly friends, and I didn’t think dinner would change anything, but I agreed to a date. He was a nice guy. We ended up getting dinner three times before I admitted my feelings had not changed.

Angelo: I was heartbroken that things didn’t go the way I had hoped, but she let me down early in the night. We continued to have a fun evening, and our conversations weren’t awkward. I felt crummy, of course, but I knew there was something special in our relationship, no matter what it would be. I was grateful to still have a friend in her.

Catie: What I didn’t tell Angelo at the time was that I could foresee a relationship in the future. I felt that dating would lead to marrying him or breaking his heart, and I just couldn’t do either of those. I told him we were friends to avoid giving him false hope, but I never stopped thinking about us. For months, I compared everyone to Angelo. On paper, he was perfect, and I was frustrated that I didn’t feel more for him. 

It took several months to come to the obvious conclusion: in the time since he had asked me out, Angelo had become my best friend. I was relieved to have a label for our relationship, and I finally felt at peace.

Angelo: I had a hard time wrapping my head around our relationship. We were still friends, we still communicated, and we enjoyed each other’s company. It wasn’t awkward. Eventually, I too recognized her as a best friend. I had to value what a deep and meaningful relationship looked like before I could commit to a romantic one. Accepting her as a best friend and letting go of anything more helped me open up to God’s will and taught me to trust that everything has a purpose.

Catie: Through youth ministry and our friendship, Angelo always knew about my family and my prayer requests. At one point, a difficult family situation left me and my loved ones heartbroken and devastated. My friends at the time didn’t understand how much I needed them, but Angelo did. Even though he was away, volunteering at a Steubenville conference, he was the one who came to my aid.

Then something went off like a lightbulb in my head. 

Here was a man who, although far away and occupied, stayed up talking for hours to calm me down. Here was a man who checked in on me and my family and had a Mass said for our intentions. Whatever barriers I had put up were suddenly down, and I realized I had romantic feelings for him. After a few weeks of discerning that these feelings were sticking around, I decided to ask for a second chance.

Angelo: I almost crashed when we were driving back from a friend’s wedding and Catie told me, “I still have feelings for you.” I was paralyzed! At first, I told her we’d be better off as friends (after all, that’s what I had finally accepted), but the next day I was an emotional mess. I was blindsided, even though this was the situation I used to dream about: that one day Catie would “come around.” That night, we talked in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I took another leap of faith. We decided to give our relationship another go.

Catie: The conversation that finally began our romantic relationship started with two identical prayers. As Angelo was walking up to my door, I prayed “Lord, please be present in our conversation.” When Angelo walked in, he asked to start in prayer: “Lord, be present in this conversation.” It was the first of many signs that this was a relationship that was going somewhere, and we agreed that night to start dating. Fourteen months of bad puns and dad-jokes later, he proposed after opening in prayer on a hike with our best friends!

Angelo: She said yes!

Catie: Angelo and I have no pictures or videos from our engagement. It was an intimate, prayerful, and perfect moment, shared only by our best friends and God. Looking back, that moment was a long time coming. It took some “friend-zoning,” a painfully long discernment period, a second chance, and a year of dating to finally lead us to where we are now.

Throughout our relationship, we found ourselves saying things like “I don’t deserve you.” Neither of us did anything to deserve being loved so wholly and so purely by another person. It’s a simple reminder of how we have done nothing to deserve the unconditional love of God. 

The love Angelo and I feel for each other as we prepare for marriage is a mere reflection and extension of the love of the Creator for His Beloved. It draws us closer to one another and closer to our Lord. 

We remained open to God’s call in each of our lives, and are now preparing to build a marriage centered in Christ. We can’t wait to see where it takes us!

Photography: Claire Watson Photography |  Location: St. John the Apostle Church in Leesburg, VA and Rust House Manor