Valentine's Day 2022: Celebrating Saint Viator Sweethearts

We meet summer of 1969. I was driving some SHM girls home from a party. Maybe at Jimmy Wendell’s house in Prospect Heights. Jean was one of the girls that got a ride home. We were married on May 7, 1978, at St. Raymond’s. We are estimating approximately 40-45 Saint Viator and SHM folks at our wedding; our pictures are of the Viator Men who attended, including Pat Mahoney, and Father Render was the celebrant at St. Raymond’s for our wedding Mass. 

Since graduating, we had 3 sons, and have been in Colorado since 1985. Our son, Michael, married to Erica, living in Erie, CO, has three kids, Lucy, 13, Willam, 9, and Declan, 3. Our son, John, married to Katy, living in Broomfield, CO, has one son, Tommy, 2. Our youngest son, Joseph, lives in Newport Beach, CA. 

We are very active with our family and grandchildren, and we are still connected closely to Saint Viator/SHM families and friends, despite living 1,000 miles away. 

We met in kindergarten at Windsor School. We were always good friends and had a great deal of respect for each other and had very similar values. We had 13 alumni attend our wedding and seven alumni stood up in our wedding. We live in Arlington Heights and have four children. Danny and Lauren are graduates of Saint Viator, and our two younger children, Megan ‘23 and Kenny ‘25 are current students. Jen currently works at Saint Viator in the development and athletic departments and just completed her 5th year. We attend many events and truly are Lions for Life!

Larissa Prociuk ‘93 and Bill Miller ‘93 met their senior year at Saint Viator High School. Both were in the Spanish Club which was run by their teacher and Larissa’s mom, “Doña.” Sparks began to fly when they both volunteered to sell nachos and churros to raise money for the club. One day, Larissa saw Bill in the library and sat across from him to study. This was the start of their story. Soon after, they went on a double date with another couple from school. The four friends went ice skating and then enjoyed pancakes at Walker Brothers. Larissa remembers how months later Bill left a rose and note in her locker asking her to the prom. She still has the rose, and after all of these years, the two are inseparable! Larissa and Bill now live in North Carolina. They have two sons, Nicholas, 14, and Adrian, 9. Both boys attend school at St. Catherine of Siena. They have been told to be nice to the girls because one day, they might just be married to one another!

We met at Saint Viator during our freshman year. For all four years of high school, we remained in the same friend group, but we joke that we’re not quite sure if we actually spoke to each other in high school. We ultimately reconnected after college and probably had our first actual conversation then.

We have kept in touch with many of our high school friends and had about 40 Saint Viator alumni attendees. Six of Tom’s groomsmen were Viator alumni,  and six of my bridesmaids were Viator alumni.

We both still feel very connected to the Saint Viator community through our close-knit group of high school friends. Since graduating, we’ve obviously gotten married, had two kids (Burke, 3, and Reese, 1), and recently moved from the city back to Arlington Heights. We’re very happy to be back in the suburbs and close to our family and friends. 

We met in our mutual friend's basement (Tim Hogaboom ‘11) over the summer. I thought Megan was a cute and fun sophomore and Megan thought I was a cute and outgoing junior. We didn't hang out again until the start of the school year but sought each other out at football games and in the back parking lot on our ways to soccer and tennis. We had 18 alumni at our wedding. After dating long distance in college, we both moved to Lincoln Park in Chicago and tied the knot in 2020 with a small ceremony with immediate family (due to covid) and a larger ceremony in 2021 with all our friends and family and Fr. Corey Brost, CSV, presiding. Megan is an oncology research Nurse for Northwestern (previously at Lurie Children's Hospital) and Hank works for Beam Suntory doing strategy for Maker's Mark and other spirit brands. We were fortunate to stay connected with Saint Viator as a school through Megan's younger siblings who recently graduated, but have stayed connected with the broader Viator community/spirit through the friendships we made at Saint Viator!  Because when you're a lion, you're a lion for life!