Deacon Dads, Married Kids: A Catholic Love Story Written By Providence
- Guest Contributor
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
From diaconate formation to the wedding Mass, God was at work every step of the way.
By Jay Sorgi
Katie and Victor Villa prove that God can turn small things, like a delivery of raffle tickets and a night at a taco bar, into something beautiful, even a sacramental union.
Of course, it helps to have dads who are Denver-area deacons and who became close friends during their formation, which they began together in 2019.
“Steve Boselli and the Boselli Family have always been very welcoming,” Victor’s father, Deacon Raul Martinez, said. He lives in Erie and serves at St. Theresa Parish in Frederick. “He introduced himself. We hit it off, right off the bat. As a matter of fact, we had a group of four of us. During the wives’ weekend of diaconate formation, our wives also hit it off really well. We actually met Katie well before my son met Katie.”
Victor said that, had his dad not exited his first stint in diaconate formation in 2014, he might never have met Deacon Boselli and started the providential domino effect that led to finding his partner for life.
“During my dad’s formation, my little brother was born, and he thought he could deal with all of that. And then my little sister was born. It was just too chaotic, too much stuff was going on, so he withdrew from the diaconate program,” Victor explained. “If he never withdrew early, Katie and I might have never even connected.”
“We created a bond there of sharing a lot in that first year together,” Deacon Boselli, Katie’s dad, said about his friendship with Deacon Martinez. Deacon Boselli resides in Boulder and serves at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, ministering to students at the University of Colorado.
Deacon Boselli got to know Victor through a shared love of football, even as Victor — a Colorado fan — also shares an equal love of University of Southern California football.
“We were at a football game, Colorado-USC. Vick and Raul are big USC fans, so they had their jerseys on. They came and sat with us at the CU section,” Deacon Boselli recalled. “We just really hit it off. He was just a fine man, and I just thought, ‘Wow, it’s interesting that he happens to be about the same age as my daughter, Katie.’ That led to that next thought, ‘Hey, you guys should meet each other.’”
Katie was a bit reluctant.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, whatever, Dad, I’m not meeting up with him. That’s weird,” she admitted. “Then one afternoon, I was home alone, and my little brother called me and said, ‘Dad is sending a boy over to the house to buy some raffle tickets.’ Shortly after, Victor showed up, and his dad had sent him over, selling a few raffle tickets to my dad. So that’s how we met.”
That early July 2021 conversation dived deep into their shared field of accounting, and then a much more fun conversation a few days later at their dads’ softball game, where Victor asked Katie out.
They went to a taco bar in Boulder for date one and then discovered their own deeper connections, both in faith and a love of family.
“We knew through our dads that God and family were so important in our families that it was comforting when we started dating,” Katie says.
“Going over to dinner at their house after Mass on a Saturday and seeing all the Bosellis at once was always really fun,” Victor adds. “Then on Sunday nights, we would go over to my parents’ house, and we would have dinner with all my big family.”
Deacon Martinez says that once the relationship began, he had concerns about the deacons’ connections if something were to happen between Katie and Victor.
“We were thinking if things don’t pan out too well, you know, what will that do to our friendship?” Deacon Martinez said. “But God had other plans, and God united our families, and it was a beauty.”
“Both of our dads and parents are very religious and very Catholic, and we are too, but in a different way,” Katie explained. “When we started dating, we decided to make our own Catholic traditions and started doing it our own way.”
Yet seeing their deacon dads dive deeper into their own faith helped Katie and Victor augment their own.
“The background knowledge that our parents, our dads, have gone through in the diaconate, ‘This is why we do this, this is why we do that,’ it’s been super intriguing to get some curiosity into the Catholic faith and kind of seeing the purpose behind what we do,” Victor said. “It has helped us embrace the faith even more.”
Having them around was also incredible during the marriage preparation process, though they praised the culture of the Catholic faith in Denver, which deeply empowered them.
“We had them both to ask questions to,” Victor says. “They both do marriage prep on the side, helping other young couples. They’re already doing it themselves.”
“We also both realized having deacon dads, we had already had a lot of conversations that you have in marriage prep, but prior to marriage prep,” Katie added.
A trip to Victor’s native California led to their engagement, and ultimately their wedding in November 2025 at St. Thomas More Parish in Centennial.
The wedding planning raised the question: Do the deacon dads serve as deacons during their wedding? Who would do the Gospel, the homily or help with the Liturgy of the Eucharist?
Katie and Victor had a simple solution: just be dads.
“We talked to them both separately and together, and they both decided that they would do what the other one wanted to do; they’d also do what we wanted them to do,” Katie remembered. “I’m the only daughter. I kind of understood that he would rather just be my dad for the day, which was actually ultimately what I wanted, too. My dad does a lot of weddings for my brothers and my cousins, so I just wanted him to be a dad for the day, and the same goes for Victor’s dad. It felt more personal.”
Katie and Victor are planning to move to San Diego for a couple of years before raising their family in Colorado, in a relationship where they prioritize God first.
“Katie has helped me get closer to God and make sure that he’s really the number one person, and then family,” Victor said.
Meanwhile, Deacons Boselli and Martinez continue to do exactly the same, fostering their brotherhood as deacons, with the Bosellis becoming godparents to Deacon Martinez’s newest daughter.
If that child one day needs marriage prep, they know who to turn to.
