On July 29, 2012, I saw an ad for ChristianMingle.com that was displayed when I was checking my email. “Oh what the heck, why not go for it?” I thought to myself. After all, I knew a few people who met and married because of dating web sites. After filling out my profile and submitting my photo, I looked at single men in my area. As I scrolled through, one man’s photo caught my eye. I really liked his smile, but because I literally had just signed up, I thought that I better keep scrolling. Well, I kept coming back to this picture I liked… Ray. After spending what felt like forever trying to write a simple note because I was nervous about dating again, I hit send and received a response from Ray that included his phone number.

We spoke the next day and met that evening, Aug. 1, 2012. It was like I had known Ray my entire life, which is funny because we discovered that I went to school with his brother and sister and was friends with both of them! We literally grew up on dairy farms a few miles from each other. It crossed our minds that we probably went to some of the same events, weddings, roller skating parties, but never met. We started talking that night and haven’t stopped. We share the same Christian values and ideas and cherish each other as friends and soul mates by bringing out the best in each other. Between the two of us, we have 6 children. Ray has 4 daughters and 3 grandchildren and I have 2 sons. The “kids” range from 28 down to 17 in age.

We are very grateful for this opportunity to meet and we are happy to announce that after getting engaged on December 8, 2012, we were married on April 26, 2013.