But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.' Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.

We’ve played on a lot of teams, but this one’s our favorite. It’s not a quick highlight reel, but it’s our greatest win yet. Check out below for the full play-by-play of ~Our Story~ (with many assists and a happy ending)...

The story starts on September 29, 2001 with the birth of Lucy in China. A little over a month later, Louis popped out into the world on November 8, 2001 to Bob and Rosanne Blakeman in New York. As an infant, Lucy was given up, found, and placed in an orphanage. About a year later, just as Louis was celebrating his first birthday, Larry Young was flying across the world to adopt Lucy and bring her back to the US, where his wife, Tricia, and newborn daughter, Natalie, were waiting to welcome her into the family. Flash-forward 16 years, Louis and Lucy both decide to attend the University of Maryland, College Park. And so the story really begins… Louis and Lucy met for the first time in the South Campus Dining Hall at the University of Maryland (GO TERPS!!). While they obviously credit God for His providential planning and timing, they would be remiss not to mention in this meeting story... Sam Silverstone. Lucy had met Sam during their first week at UMD at a Catholic Student Center (CSC) freshman event. (Sidenote: Sam and Lucy played cornhole together that night and discovered they were a FIRE cornhole team together. They ended up winning the championship title and really cool Under Armour t-shirts at the CSC Cornhole Tournament a couple years later). Louis, on the other hand, had no clue that the Catholic Student Center existed at the time, but met Sam in a freshman year English class. Louis and Sam quickly hit it off and soon began hanging out outside of class, working out and going to the dining hall to eat together, naturally. One day, Sam mentioned he was going to an event at the CSC later that night to which Louis responded, "Oh, I'm Catholic!" Louis eventually attended one of the weekly CSC Wednesday Night Dinner events with Sam (which Lucy most likely had also been at) and was intrigued. Sam later reached out to Lucy to help him get a group of CSC friends together to meet Louis. On Friday, February 28th, after one of Lucy's Friday evening Bible studies, she and some bstud friends met Louis, Sam, and a couple other CSC guys at the South Campus Dining Hall (the superior dining hall on campus, of course) for dinner. This was one of the first of many hangouts amongst these friends, and the beginning of Louis and Lucy's friendship :)

Very shortly after that first encounter, COVID hit and all UMD students were sent home for the remainder of the school year. Louis went all the way back to Long Island, NY and Lucy drove the 30 minutes back to her home in Rockville, MD, where, over the course of the summer, she actually completely forgot Louis existed. Come end of August 2020, sophomore year of college began; Louis was on campus and Lucy was living at home. Lucy received many phone call campus updates from her friend Marie, who casually brought up one day that while sitting at the Fall Retreat registration table at the CSC (Marie and Lucy were both retreat leaders), Louis signed up! Lucy needed some reminding of who Louis was, but Marie helped and all the memories of Lucy's first encounter with Louis flooded back! She remembered him being very tall, very cool, and very cute. At the beginning of that year, she had sworn herself to a year-long dating fast, however, prompting her to repeatedly convince herself, her sisters, and a couple of her closest friends that they would just be platonic friends. Louis, on the other hand, was more-so focused on the fact that this was one of his first retreats ever and wasn't so sure what to expect... Flashforward to October, Louis and Lucy's second encounter was on this fall retreat at the CSC! Despite being masked, Louis was hard to miss with his 6'5 height and blonde MULLET (a COVID experiment). Louis noticed Lucy's friendly, fun, and outgoing nature, and enjoyed being around her. The retreat leaders, many of whom were the CSC friends from that first Dining Hall dinner, started hanging out a lot more after this retreat, hosting bonfires, small apartment hangouts (or at Lucy's house in Rockville), and a lot of intramural softball up at the Xfinity fields. Lucy may or may not have platonically thrown Louis a surprise birthday party at one of these events, with her sister Maggie making the Oreo birthday cake for him. And Louis may or may not have volunteered to be interviewed by Lucy for her class project after one of these events, the first time the two got to talk more one-on-one. Regardless, Louis and Lucy had many months of growing in friendship alongside these awesome people :)

As the semester went on, the two continued to see each other a lot at their friend hangouts, Catholic Terps intramural softball games, College Mentors for Kids (CMFK) meetings, St. Jude's food pantry, St. Patrick's Blessed Bean socials, and of course, the CSC. Over winter break, Louis surprised Lucy one evening by FaceTiming her, “needing help” setting up his CMFK fundraiser page. Lucy was definitely excited, but thought that maybe it was normal for him to randomly call up his girl friends. Little did she know, during that winter break, Louis talked one night with his best friend since third grade, Chris Spina, and hinted that there was maybe a certain girl back at UMD who he’d possibly hopefully start dating that spring semester… So, winter break passed by and the two reconnected the following semester on another retreat, FOCUS' SEEK21 Conference! This semester, the two found themselves drawn to talking with each other a lot. One occasion of note occurred on Valentine’s Day of that year, when they went on a ~casual~ walk together with their friend Maura along the Paint Branch Trail right off campus. Again, totally normal and platonic! Anyways, they still saw each other often at the CSC, where Lucy soon taught Louis how to pray the Rosary and they started praying one together every Thursday. Some Luminous Mysteries later, Lucy attended her first women's silent retreat at the CSC. When the retreat was over, Lucy decided to go on a walk on the Paint Branch Trail, where, lo and behold, Louis also was! He was on the phone with someone, so she planned to simply wave to him and continue walking. However, Louis motioned for her to wait while he finished up his call (with the best friend since third grade, Chris Spina, she later learned), and the two ended up walking and talking for awhile along the trail. At the end, the two were standing together on a bridge, the sun was setting, "Build My Life" was playing on Louis' phone, all was peaceful and still when Louis turned to Lucy and asked, "Lucy, would you like to go on a date with me?" Lucy smiled and responded, "Yes, I would love to :)" Their first date was (pre-Louis-having-a-car-on-campus) a walk around Lake Artemesia followed by dinner and a shorter walk around McKeldin Mall. They talked a lot about their childhoods, families, and faith. A second date for DC monumenting was planned that night, followed by many more to come...

After a couple dates and a lot of prayer and discernment over the course of the next month, on the day after Easter of that year, Louis visited Lucy at the front desk where she worked. The two shared all about their Easter weekends. Afterwards, Louis mentioned that on each day during Lent, he had been reaching out to forty different people in his life to express how much they meant to him, and he’d wanted to save hers for last and in person. He proceeded to share some very nice things about what he really liked about Lucy and officially asked her to be his girlfriend! She said, "Yes!"

Over the next three years of dating, some of the things they loved getting to share together were quality time with each other’s families (shoutout Bethany Beach & Smokey the Bear), many of the same friends (some of whom started dating each other too!), the Catholic Student Center, SPORTS, graduating from UMD, starting first jobs, coaching bball and soccer together (Coach Lou or lumberjack??), Louis moving to Rockville with four awesome CSC guy friends (the Marlin boyz), Lucy moving to Silver Spring with four awesome Catholic women (where it has remained consistent that all residents move out either because they get married or enter the convent, true story), attending CSC alumni events, & helping out with the Catholic youth and young adult ministries in the area together (shoutout MOCA & Mike and Annie!!). Prayer and discernment regularly prompted conversations about getting married, including one exciting discussion in March of this past year...

This past March, Louis and Lucy both had the opportunity to go to Rome for a conference during HOLY WEEK! They didn't actually get to see much of each other during the trip, but it was still an extremely beautiful and fruitful experience. The one night they were able to meet up for a date, the two talked more about God calling them to marriage. The weekend after getting back from Rome, Louis took Lucy out to look at rings together!! For the third time in her life, Lucy got her nails done, and over the course of the next three months, she waited SUPER patiently for what was to come… In the meantime, Louis kept himself busy, secretly making trips out to a Catholic jeweler in Annapolis to design and purchase the ring. He also managed to discreetly take Lucy’s parents out to dinner (at Villa Maya of course) to ask for their blessing. At the beginning of June, Louis went into Lucy’s Google Docs calendar and scheduled in their weekly dates for that month. The last date was scheduled for June 23rd, reading “Mass & Date w/ Louis.”

Lo and behold, on June 23rd, Louis had a whole surprise date day planned. He brought them both to 12pm Mass at the Basilica in DC. Afterwards, they prayed together at a couple of different places inside the Basilica (at each location, Lucy wondered if Louis was going to propose). They then had a very normal burgers-and-fries lunch at Franklins in Hyattsville. When that was over, the two returned to Louis' car, Louis told Lucy they were going back to his house, and Lucy remained confused as to what the next few hours of the date day consisted of, as it was still only 3pm at the time and Louis had told Lucy to let her roommates know she wouldn’t be making it back in time for roomie dinner. She became convinced (and a little saddened) that the proposal wasn’t happening that day after all. Naturally, she decided to take a short nap as Louis drove. About 10 minutes later, the next time she opened her eyes, she noticed they were driving by the Catholic Student Center at UMD... Louis said something along the lines of, "Let's just stop by to check up on the construction,” as renovations to the CSC had begun. They parked in Mowatt Parking Garage and walked across the bridge to the CSC grounds. Just like old times, they stopped in front of the Mary Grotto to pray a Hail Mary together before heading up the steps and in through the doors, which just happened to be unlocked. Louis led them to the chapel. Immediately, Lucy noticed, to the right of the altar, a chair, a bowl, and a pitcher set up in front of the St. Joseph statue. She pretended not to notice and headed straight to the front pew of the chapel, where they had prayed together many a time while still students. The two sat and prayed more together before Louis turned and asked Lucy if he could wash her feet. She said “yes,” and as they got up to move towards the set-up, Lucy turned back and saw their friends Mary and Sam coming out of the back sacristy with their cameras, recording the moment. Louis washed Lucy's feet as a testimony of the love Christ has for His Church. He then led her to the aisle and presented her with a letter for her to read. At the end of the letter, Louis had written out four words: "Will You Marry Me?" Once Lucy got to that part, Louis got down on one knee and asked her to marry him!! She said, "YES!" Louis put on Lucy's finger the most beautiful engagement ring! He explained to her, “It’s like what marriage is… two becoming one… the twist is you (the sparkly strand because it’s prettier) and me (the gold strand) together as one, flowing forth from, centered on, and moving towards… God (God is the big diamond).” The two had fun doing a little photoshoot in the chapel and back at the Mary grotto (shoutout Sam Whitlock!). When it was just them two alone again, Lucy re-read the letter, actually processing it this time, and Louis began sharing what he had been hiding from her the past couple of months… As if the day wasn’t already perfect, Louis did still drive them back to his house, where he’d planned & prepared a whole surprise party with many of their family and friends to celebrate their new engagement! Here’s to running to the Father together for the rest of our lives!!