Mackenzie had a crush on me for 9 years, and I had no clue, and we remained friends, then a few years after I left seminary we awkwardly ran into each other at ND, and I was kinda thinking about asking her out but it was just a very awkward context, so I didn’t, and then basically our friend Nicole kicked me in the seat of my pants and so I asked Mackenzie out. Now we’re engaged, and August 9th we’ll be married!

I (Mackenzie) became friends with Luke during my freshman year at Notre Dame in 2015 through 11pm Rosary and the ND Militia of the Immaculata (NDMI). I soon developed quite the crush on this cute junior who was also quite funny and most importantly had a deep love for Jesus and Mary. For a variety of reasons, I never made this known to Luke, who entered religious formation with the Congregation of Holy Cross (CSC) after his graduation from ND in 2017. (So anything else besides friendship was off the table). We still saw each other a lot through NDMI and our group of mutual friends during our overlapping year at ND (when Luke was in formation). We kept in touch via letter when Luke was in the Novitiate my senior year. After I graduated, we would have hour-plus-long conversations about life and our ministries and pick back right where we had left off each time. I tried to surrender this friendship to the Lord, accept the fact Luke was discerning priesthood, and cherish the gift of our friendship. Once Luke discerned out of CSC in summer of 2021 and made no moves, I had given up all hope (even though he would occasionally drop hints about me leaving Tampa and finding a job in Kansas City during our very sporadic conversations). Fast forward to August 2023, we both happened to stay at our mutual friends’ house for the final vows for Luke’s CSC classmates and barely talked to each other. I was in the throes of my first year of teaching and very fed up with the ambiguous nature of our friendship and abruptly left after a very short goodbye with Luke. I resolved to finally move on, so you can imagine my surprise when he called me out of the blue in the spring of 2024 and then we regularly began talking much more intentionally. Little did I know another mutual friend (Nicole!) had recently visited Luke in Kansas City and suggested that he ask me out. On account of the 700 miles of distance between us, Luke got creative and suggested that we meet up in a halfway location in Louisville, Kentucky when he was home in Nashville for 4th of July. On July 3, we met up for Mass, a picnic (featuring Luke’s homebrew mead), and a hike, with both of us surrendering expectations and keeping open hearts to see what the Lord wanted to do with this friendship. The date went so well that we hiked for 8 miles and then got pizza and then spent most of our drives back home on the phone too. We then began the marathon of long-distance, criss-crossing across the midwest between Columbus and Kansas City monthly, with trips to Indianapolis, South Bend, and Nashville sprinkled in. In October, we planned Luke’s move to Columbus and chose to move him on Christ the King weekend. Little did I know that Luke had also chosen this to be the weekend he would propose! I flew in to be there for his last weekend at St. Regis and help him move. After the vigil Mass, he asked me to come back into the church to retrieve his coffee cup from the sacristy. (Luke: “I left it intentionally so I had an excuse to go back into the Church with Mackenzie”) As we were walking, Luke got down on one knee in front of Jesus in the tabernacle and proposed! From our first date and praying Rosaries and Night Prayer together throughout friendship, dating, and engagement to first saying “I love you” in front of an Adoration Chapel and getting engaged in front of the tabernacle, we strive to keep Christ at the center of our relationship and allow Him to transform and heal our hearts and can’t wait to see all He continues to work through this vocation to Marriage!