“I was more scared for him than I was for myself,” Whelan recalled. “I thought, ‘Nothing can happen to him.’” In the water, Holland pulled her close, positioned himself between her and the sharks, and confidently guided her back toward the boat. “My focus was just making her feel safe,” he said.
For Whelan, the frightening encounter also brought clarity to the depth of her feelings.
“In that moment I thought, I love this person with all my bones and would do anything to save and protect them, and I could see myself with him forever,” she said.
Later that year, they moved in together to the Edgewater neighborhood in Miami. In July 2025, they moved to Tampa, Fla., where they currently reside.
During a summer trip to Highlands, N.C., on Aug. 27, 2024, they went on a hike, and as they stopped to view the mountain, Holland proposed.
Almost two years later, on Aug. 26, Holland’s best friend, Adam Cohen, officiated the couple’s legal ceremony at their home in Tampa after being ordained by American Marriage Ministries for the occasion. Anita Rosete, a deputy clerk with the Hillsborough Clerk of Court & Comptroller, signed their marriage license, and Holland’s parents, Nancy Ruth Holland and Charles Robert Holland, served as witnesses.
Two months earlier, on June 27, Cohen had also led the couple’s larger wedding celebration, held before 134 guests on the rooftop terrace of Reid’s Palace, a Belmond Hotel, in Madeira, Portugal. Whelan walked down the aisle with her mother, Lisa Anne Whelan, to “You’re So Cool” by Hans Zimmer.
