'Beautiful Witness to the Grace of the Sacrament': St. Pius X's Sassatelli Wedding
April 8, 2026
St. Pius X’s 9am Mass on February 1 began the usual way. The congregation rose, the opening song was sung, and the parish’s pastor, Father Matthew Luft, walked down the aisle towards the altar.
Then, the typical order was interrupted with an announcement.
“My brothers and sisters, we have a great, great treat for you today,” Fr. Luft said. “Because this is the first time I have ever done this, and I’m so thrilled to be doing it: We have a wedding here at Sunday Mass.”
In the front row of the Church stood Joseph Sassatelli, 91, and Antonia Garvey, 84, ready to be married. Nested into the Mass, the couple took their vows and left the church man and wife.
The couple met while living active lives in their shared living community, and they began to spend time more and more time together. Over the course of two years, they grew closer and closer, and the friendship developed into a deeper relationship.
“We were not planning on ever getting married again” Sassatelli said. “But there was a ‘shazam’ moment, and it happened.”
Though both had been married previously, totaling 115 years for both in their previous marriages, both Sassatelli and Garvey said that they would never want to replace their original spouse, the impossibility of which they stressed to their combined 11 children and 25 grandchildren.
“This love doesn’t take anything away from the first loves of our lives,” Garvey said. “We are still living our lives and it just feels so good that you have somebody that you are that special to. It doesn’t go away because you are old. When you are old, you still need that special connection.”
It was the recognition of that connection that led the two seek out Fr. Luft and ask him to consecrate their love in the eyes of the Church through the sacrament of marriage.
“They had a very real sense that this really was a vocation for them and that they had found someone to live their vocation with,” Fr. Luft said. “They really felt like they were drawn together and gathered by God, and they really wanted to celebrate that.”
Fr. Luft said also said that the community was overjoyed by the union of two parishioners who had spent a combined 125 years at St. Pius X.
“This is what the Church envisions, that people can celebrate in the midst of the community,” he said. “It was a beautiful witness to the grace of the sacrament.”
The newlyweds returned from their honeymoon in Phoenix, Arizona, in late March, during which they celebrated their love with quality time and various activities, including museum visits and dancing.
“Toni is just a fantastic dancer,” Sassatelli said. “I just pretend like I can dance and we just have a great time. It just doesn’t seem fair that we can have this much fun.”
Though not a typical love story, the couple noted that their marriage shows that love is absent the constraints of time, and when seen from the eyes of God, age does not matter so much as the eternal bond shared between two souls that desire the intimate closeness that can only achieved through the sacrament of marriage.
“It’s just we love heck out of each other, and I tell her that every day,” Sassatelli said.
*All photos for this story are courtesy of Laura Wills Photography. The Sassatelli wedding is one parishioner story (among many) to be featured in the 75th anniversary storytelling project for St. Pius X, soon to be released.