Shannon & Luke
Photo by James & Schulze
Shannon Costello fell in love with Luke Düster’s kids first. Luke was raising his three children on his own, and in August of 2013, he hired Shannon to tutor, coach, and help take care of the kids on the weekends and weeknights when he had them. “After about seven months, I had fallen head over heels with the kids, and the feeling seemed to be mutual,” she recalls. “It was around then that Luke and I started to let our guard down and get to know one another beyond our professional relationship.” And by month nine of working for the Düsters, Shannon was ready to quit. “I told Luke that I’d grown too close to all of them to maintain professional boundaries,” she says. “He was relieved—he thought he was going to have to fire me!” It turned out the kids had been wondering for months why they weren’t dating, and with their blessing, Shannon and Luke went on their first date.
In July of 2015, Luke surprised Shannon with a bouquet from their garden, plus breakfast and a proposal with poems he’d written for her. After she said “yes,” he gave Shannon three more letters, each written by his three kids. She says, “He joked that if he’d given me their letters first, he wouldn’t have known if I meant it when I said yes. Because how could anyone say no to all the sweet things they said?!”
See their wedding here!
