A Pilgrimage of Love
At Berea College, we take pride in seeing every one of our students embark on their life’s journeys. But it’s always especially heartwarming when two Bereans decide to travel together. On a study abroad trip last year, right before beginning their trek down an ancient pilgrimage road in Spain, Catherine ’26 and David ’26 also started another, even more exciting journey. On the day that they began walking the Camino de Santiago, David asked Catherine to marry him.
David and Catherine’s journey together started during their very first semester at Berea. “One month into our first year, we began dating,” Catherine recalled. Over the next three years, their relationship grew and deepened. Last year—their junior year—they both studied abroad in Europe, but in different countries: David in Germany and Catherine in Spain. But they planned to finish out their time abroad with a very special walking tour together. The Camino de Santiago, or “Way of St. James,” is an ancient network of pilgrimage trails in Spain. The route culminates at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where the apostle’s bones rest.
Just before setting out on the Camino, on a beach in Ferrol, Spain, David proposed. “That moment was a beautiful testimony to the last three years we’d been together; all of the experiences we shared and all that’s yet to come,” Catherine said. “I was grateful to be in Spain, grateful for the chance to learn and explore, and I was especially grateful to be there with David.”
David had known for a long time that this was how he wanted to ask Catherine to marry him, but he wasn’t sure whether it should be at the end of the journey or the beginning. Finally, he decided to do it at the start. “The beginning felt right,” said David. “We would be starting two journeys at once: one that would last six days, and one that would last a lifetime.”
David found a stunning local beach online, and suggested they go walk along the shore. “I was shockingly nervous. I wanted it to be perfect,” David recalled. “I was practically shaking. I was trying to play it cool and act normally, but inside I was losing it.” He made an excuse about taking a picture of them both at a beautiful overlook and set up his phone to capture the proposal. Then he dropped to one knee and pulled out the ring.
Catherine was ecstatic. “Once I realized what was happening, I felt completely full—full of happiness, full of gratitude, and full of love,” she said. Catherine was so overcome that David actually had to repeat his proposal. “She had the best reaction I could have ever hoped for. She yelled, did this adorable little dance, and laughed harder than I’ve ever heard her laugh,” said David. “I had to ask her to marry me twice, because she couldn’t hear me over her laughter. And then she said ‘yes.’ I felt like the richest man in the world.”
To both get engaged and begin walking the Camino all on the same day felt highly significant. “It felt romantic in the obvious way, but it also felt meaningful in a deeper way because it happened right before the Camino—right before we were about to start this long, challenging, beautiful journey together,” said Catherine. “It was a promise and a partnership all wrapped up in one moment.”
From all of us at Berea College, Happy Valentine’s Day.
