Couple Fell in Love, Married at Ground Zero

N E W   Y O R K, June 6 -- When Dawn LoPiccolo and John Mraz first met, they were inside a 20- by 12-foot wooden shack at Ground Zero on Christmas Day.

The minister who married them on Wednesday said that a higher power must have been involved in that first meeting, so their marriage could be born from the ashes of Sept. 11.

"This day is more than a celebration," the minister said. "This is a day of miracles."

A year ago, neither LoPiccolo nor Mraz would have written such a happy ending. Even before the day of the terrorist attacks, they were facing the most difficult year of their lives.

‘One Disaster After the Other’

LoPiccolo, the single mother of 2-year-old daughter named Gillian, was getting over the death of her beloved grandmother.

"I'd waited a long time to be a mom and at the same time, I was saying goodbye to my grandmother," she told ABC's Good Morning America.

Mraz's wife of 19 years had just passed away eight months previously, leaving him to raise their 7-year-old son John James alone.

"So, it was just one disaster after the other," Mraz said. "And then September 11th happened."

Mraz, a New York City firefighter, had just come back to work at Engine Co. 248 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, after months of bereavement leave.

"My first night back was September 10th, and that morning, one of the guys that relieved me for the day tour came and he said 'there's something going on the department radio — you've got to hear this guy,'" Mraz recalled.

‘I Need to Go’

Mraz was at Ground Zero that first day. A few days later LoPiccolo drove down from her home in Albany, N.Y., to volunteer as a massage therapist, providing comfort to those who dug tirelessly in the moonscape of the disaster.

"We didn't sleep," LoPiccolo said. "For the first week I think I slept two, three hours a night. That was it."

For months, Mraz and LoPiccolo toiled at Ground Zero and never met — until Christmas Day.

"I kept telling everybody, 'I want to go back on Christmas,'" LoPiccolo said. "'And I don't know why. I just feel like I need to be in the pit on Christmas. If there are guys working there, I need to go.'"