When Jordan Rice saw Jessica Moreland's wedding photo posted
to her blog, "One Day at a Time," he was moved not only by her
"raw, wild smile" but the tragedy she had endured.
Jessica's husband Jarronn was killed in a motorcycle
accident in 2009, just two and a half months after their wedding.
Jordan, too, had been widowed in his 20s and also blogged.
He lost his wife Danielle to a rare heart sarcoma in 2011, a little more than
two years after they were married.
Mutual friends suggested Jordan, a lawyer turned New York
City pastor, and Jessica, a marketing specialist from Washington, D.C., meet
because both had shared overwhelming grief at such a young age.
"Jordan and I talked about this the first time we met
-- never feeling like we could be excited about a person again," said
Jessica, now 30.
"We knew we would meet someone, but it would never be
the same, and nothing could reach the pinnacle that it was before."
But on June 22, they married in a simple ceremony in
Baltimore that friends say even included the families of their late spouses and
brought all to tears.
"There wasn't a dry eye in the room, even the
waiters," said the bride, who is now 30 and Jessica Rice.
"I liken it to being a parent," she told
ABCNews.com. "You love a child to death, but when you have a second child,
you don't love them less."
The couple left this week for a honeymoon in Italy, but the
video of their story, which was shown at their wedding, has gone viral with
nearly 18,000 views.
"This story could have been scripted for a Lifetime
movie," said Jordan's best friend of 13 years, Justin Jones-Fosu, who is
in theological school in Mississippi. "They are handsome, beautiful,
intelligent, quirky -- but their relationship is really awesome.
"The fact that God could bring them together is almost
too good to be true."
Jessica met her husband Jarronn in 2004 when they both
worked at Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey. They married in 2009 and
relocated to the Maryland area.
"We were everything I could imagine as soul
mates," she said.
But just months after they married, Jarronn went on a short
motorcycle ride with friends and ended up in intensive care, fighting for his
life.
"His injuries were so serious that the blood had
drained out of his body," said Jessica. "There was too much strain on
his heart."
She was widowed for three years and dated others.
"One guy was great, but it was always really
challenging for him to understand my history, and I think he really struggled
with the idea that I could expand to love someone else," Jessica said.
Meanwhile, Jordan, now 31, who grew up in New Rochelle,
N.Y., met Danielle, a math teacher, and married her in 2009. "For the
first six months, it was marital bliss, very much the honeymoon phase," he
said.
Soon she began to feel ill, and the couple thought she might
be pregnant. An X-ray later revealed Danielle had fluid around her heart that
appeared to be a virus.
"She started really getting worse very quickly,"
said Jordan. "Within four days, she couldn't walk anymore. Her resting
heart rate was around 140 beats a minute -- lying down."
Surgeons removed the pressure from around Danielle's heart,
but five days later, while sleeping in the hospital waiting room, Jordan was
awakened to startling news: Danielle had a rare and deadly form of cancer,
primary cardiac angiosarcoma. She died 10 months later.
"I was miserable," he said. "I felt out of
place … a 27-year-old doesn't die of cancer. It was very unfair and challenging
on every front."
Jordan eventually dated, but said, "I thought I might
meet someone cool and nice and sweet, but I don't know if I would be madly in
love with this person and feel deeply for them."
In 2012, Jordan's friends were in New York and mentioned a
girl, "Jessica," who had also lost her spouse. Like Jordan, they said
she was a blogger and had written about her experience.
"Someone had sent me a link to Jessica's blog after my
wife died, but I didn't click on it -- I didn't care," he said. But after
realizing they had friends in common, he went back home and pored through a
"sea of messages" to find the link.
"I loved how candid she was," he said. "She
described the raw emotion that I had felt on so many occasions. … I respected
her for honoring his life. How much she adored him was something very powerful
to me."
Then Jordan, who barely had 25 of his closest friends on
Facebook, friended Jessica. He said he was careful not to be "the creepy
guy" who stalks someone after they accept the Facebook request.
"That's not my MO," he laughed.
Jessica, too, at first ignored his request -- until she
realized they had mutual friends from Morgan State, where Jordan had attended
college. "I smiled, but I never responded," she said.
But days later, she had lunch with the same couple who knew
Jordan and they sang his praises. So she researched his blog and was moved to
reach out to him.
"I was a little further along the path -- I was three
years out and he was only at a year and a half -- and I told him you never get
over it, but you learn to live with it," said Jessica.
Their email exchanges got longer and deeper and eventually
Jordan made an excuse to visit her in September in Washington. DC., where she
was working at the time. He was said he was "incredibly nervous … afraid I
would screw up."
They sat for hours over lunch talking. "I cried as he
was talking, and he got emotional as I was talking," said Jessica.
"He invited me to get together the next day."
The second day was more comfortable for Jordan. And that
six-hour date was a moment of realization for Jessica.
"I can't really say when or why during that
conversation, but there was a period where I was looking at him, and I thought,
'Whoa, what's going on?' I could not believe what was happening," she
said. "When he left, I was flabbergasted. I knew my life was about to turn
upside down."
Jordan said he felt the same way: "I knew, 100 percent,
this was it."
From then on, as Jessica recalled, it was "full speed
ahead."
Within weeks, they introduced the other to their families.
Almost without words, they knew they would be married, so they arranged for
premarital counseling with a therapist Jordan had seen after Danielle's death.
"We wanted to make sure we were thinking clearly,"
said Jessica, "and not caught in la-la land."
The therapist ordered an assessment test -- about 100
questions on topics from conflict resolution to financial management, and was
stunned with the results: "Either you guys are the kind of people who
anticipate the other person's answer or you are the most compatible couple I
have ever seen."
The rest is history. The couple will make their home in New
York City, where Jordan has begun preaching at a non-denominational parish in
Harlem. They say they are best friends and lovers and are eager to start a
family together.
"We always laugh," said Jordan. "I stare into
her eyes and feel so incredibly connected and hope and pray we have a long life
together -- though, that is not always promised."
"Who has a man like this? Really, he can't be real. No
man is like this, so very loyal and caring, supportive and principled,"
said Jessica, who was on a separate line in their interview with ABCNews.com.
"I am crying over here on the other end of the
phone."
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