On Committed, host Jo Piazza explores stories of couples who have struggled through unimaginable circumstances and emerged more devoted to each other than ever. On this episode, she looks at three stories of “commitment and love in the age of corona,” she says, because “I need to know how everyone is handling this….I just need to know how we live.” These are brief looks into each couples’ story, but aren’t short on inspiration; hear how one doctor is living apart from his family to protect them from infection, how a cardboard factory stepped in to make one couple’s wedding ceremony a little less lonely, and a groom who couldn’t wait to see his bride at the altar – so he created a surprise wedding in the Nintendo game Animal Crossing.
Ben and Joy are married with a toddler son and another baby on the way. When Covid-19 started making the news, Ben, a family physician and urgent care doctor, knew he’d be seeing patients right on the frontlines. And since it’s a new virus, there’s no information about how it affects pregnant women or fetuses. So Ben moved out, a few miles down the road, and they work to make sure he stays connected to his son, but the challenges continue to mount: Joy, responsible for working full-time and parenting full-time while pregnant, had such high anxiety that she woke up bleeding, fearful she had lost the baby. “I had to let go of my expectations and figure out what success really looks like right now,” she says.
Dan and Amy had planned their wedding for April 4, but as February slid into March, they continued to revise their plans over and over again with each new headline. “They say you should have a Plan A and a Plan B,” Dan says, “but I think we’ve been through the alphabet a couple of times.” The main thing they both wanted was to be married in a church, but the guest count dwindled until it was just their parents in attendance. Dan hated the idea of Amy walking down the aisle surrounded by empty pews: “It just seemed like a long, lonely walk,” he says. So they came up with the idea of making cardboard silhouettes to represent their friends and family. 120 silhouettes is no small undertaking, but Dan was ready to do it; he went to their local cardboard factory to buy the materials. But the factory had other plans: “They just went above and beyond,” Dan says.
Charmin and Nezul were supposed to get married in April, too, and having to postpone was “pretty devastating,” Charmin says – until Nezul got the idea to plan a secret wedding inside a video game for all her friends to attend. Hear more about these stories of love, resilience, and kindness in the time of corona on this episode of Committed.
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