We were about to meet for dinner, but my stomach was churning. Uncharacteristically, food was the last thing on my mind. This was supposed to be a friendly dinner. We had succeeded in planning a beautiful weekend retreat together: a dozen of our friends in a beach house at Cape May, jumping into the brisk March ocean, mass in the living room, and cooking dinner together. We were supposed to be toasting to celebrate, just two blocks from our church, where we had spent several evenings talking about the retreat—and then about each other. And for some reason, as our post-retreat celebratory dinner approached, I found myself nervous. This seemed like more than just dinner. Then we saw each other at the restaurant, and all my nerves disappeared. He was smiling, and so did I. I had brought him a gift to thank him for his help at the retreat—a small jar of my homemade hot honey. To my surprise, he presented me with a gift too: chocolate chip cookies, now slightly crumbled. He had baked them himself. And he offered me his jacket because he thought I looked cold. I declined—his offer alone made me feel warm. After talking for hours and eating our fill, he walked me home. As I said goodbye, he stopped me on the steps of my apartment building and nervously said, "I know we didn't say this was a date, but I really like you, and I want to take you on a date." Lo and behold: I really liked him back. I had wanted this to be a date all along. And I agreed. The next day, Danny wrote a long account of our evening in his journal. It began, "Last night I went on maybe the last first date I'll ever have." This past March, Danny proposed to me in the same room where we met, nearly five years ago, in the rectory of St Agatha-St James. I don't remember meeting him—I was newly arrived in Philly. We didn't even become friends until nearly three years later. But he remembers. Standing in that same room, holding my hands, he told me, "When I first met you, the only two thoughts I remember having are one, how beautiful you looked, and I literally said to myself, 'I could marry her. And the other thought, later in the evening, was 'Wow, she talks a lot. She's way too smart for me!" I proved his second thought wrong. I've never met someone so kind, insightful, and who understood me so well. But his first thought turned out to be right.