Other than living on the same Catholic campus, Matt McMenaman and Mary Broom didn’t seem to have much in common. She was deep into the faith, majoring in humanities and Catholic culture at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. He attended Sunday Mass there, but was more interested in business courses and preparing to join his family’s construction company back home.

Then there was the matter of not seeing eye to eye. “He was the tallest person on campus,” recalls Mary, “and I was the shortest.”

Yet, all the obstacles fell away when 6-foot-5-inch Matt met 5-foot Mary over a beer. He found that she wasn’t a religious zealot; she realized he had strong values and a clear vision for his life. After dating for two years, Matt and Mary sat by a lake in New Hampshire one summer day. Unlike many couples their age, their thoughts were set slightly above the physical. “We made a pact that we would help one another get to heaven,” Mary says.

It wasn’t exactly a proposal, but the pact led inevitably to the altar. The two were married in 1995, soon after Matt graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Steubenville and while Mary was entering her senior year. Matt went on to earn a master’s in business administration from the university in 1997, the year their first child was born. They now live in Sea Girt, N.J., with their four children. Matt is marketing manager for the family company; Mary, a stay-at-home mother. They also teach natural family planning and give talks on Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” at their parish. Yet they are far from starry-eyed romantics when it comes to family life and its hardships.

“With four children, some days it’s very difficult,” says Matt. “But I never think of it in negative terms, because we knew what we were getting into. We look to God in our marriage.”

Teaching natural family planning “keeps me accountable,” he adds. “If I’m going to get up there and talk about this, I’d better make sure I live it.”

Mary observes: “Each day we feel the absolute necessity of the centrality of God in our lives. If we didn’t have God, we’d still be together, but it would be much different. We honestly don’t know how couples stay together without the faith.”

Their Steubenville experience supports them still. “I was this business guy, and she came along and set me on fire for the faith,” Matt explains.

“It was the place where we met and built our relationship,” Mary says. “We took a course on the Christian meaning of sexuality. After nine years of marriage, we’re only beginning to crack open the full beauty of it.”

Between the Eyes

Joshua and Brooke Miller came to the faith from different directions. He was an evangelical Protestant who embraced the Catholic faith while attending a secular university. She was a cultural Catholic who thought she’d had enough religion by her teens. Their paths met at Magdalen College, a small Catholic campus in Warner, N.H., where they received the formation that sustains them in their marriage.

Brooke was a senior in 1994 when Joshua came to Magdalen after converting to the Catholic faith while at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The timing was just right. If he had met her when she was a freshman, he would not have been impressed with her commitment to the Church, Brooke admits.

After her parents divorced when she was young, Brooke had a nominal Catholic upbringing. She went to Magdalen, not for its devotion to Catholic orthodoxy, but because a cousin who went there told her the college would provide the structure and discipline she needed. But something unexpected happened.

“I had no interest in the faith,” she recalls. “But after six weeks on campus, God hit me between the eyes. I knew he was real, and I knew I had to change my life.”

By her senior year, she was ready to meet Joshua. She graduated in 1995 and stayed near Magdalen, working part-time at the college and singing Sundays in the choir. Joshua finally got up the nerve to ask Brooke’s friends about her. “We courted the old-fashioned way,” he says, “talking to friends about one another, getting to know one another while in groups.”

Eventually, the two began to date. Following Magdalen’s rules, Joshua got permission from the college’s president to leave campus at odd hours and return late on weekends. Rather than cramping their style, the formality helped them discern their relationship — as did the courses they both had taken on Catholic marriage.

They married in December 1998 and now live in Steubenville, where Joshua teaches part time at Franciscan University. He is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa., while working full time as an analyst and writer for a human-resources consulting company. Brooke stays at home with their three children.

Brooke speaks about the “Magdalen advantage,” noting: “When a guy is Catholic, pro-life and dead set against contraception, it takes six months off the dating process. You know he’s got character.”

Of Joshua, she says, “The reason I married him, other than that I was in love with him, is that I knew he would always honor God. No matter what happens to us as a couple or a family, we’ll be okay.”

Stephen Vincent writes from

Wallingford, Connecticut.