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Elizabeth Merrill
OMAHA, Neb. — The DJ is booked, and the wedding cakes — one white, one chocolate — are about to be baked. Two hundred and fifty people are ready to fill St. Michael Catholic Church near Louisville, Kentucky, late Friday afternoon for the wedding of Katelyn Farmer and Tanner Shiver.
All that is missing is the groom.
Shiver is a utility player for the Louisville Cardinals, who are playing in the Men’s College World Series. They face Oregon State on Tuesday at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha. The Cardinals’ hope is to keep staving off elimination and advance to the finals, which start Saturday.
Friday is an off day at the MCWS, and if everything goes right for Louisville and Shiver, he’ll be making the most of it. Shiver’s plan is to fly home, get hitched and make it back for the best-of-three championship round. He would have to reschedule their honeymoon, which is booked to a secret destination.
If this sounds unbelievable, here’s the kicker — Farmer is fine with all of this.
She calmly sat in the lobby of the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Omaha on Monday afternoon, working remotely on her laptop as Shiver got ready to step on a bus with his team, which was headed to a local children’s hospital.
Farmer is an athlete herself, a former midfielder on the Tennessee Tech women’s soccer team. So she gets it. In Shiver’s Louisville baseball bio, he lists Farmer as his favorite athlete, calling her a “Tennessee Tech women’s soccer legend.”
They met in the cafeteria at Tennessee Tech as freshman and were friends at first, but that didn’t last long.
“She has the prettiest blue eyes you’re ever going to see,” he said. “I had a crush on her the whole time, but I didn’t tell her.”
Shiver is Farmer’s first boyfriend.
“I’m just a girl who knows what I want,” she said.
About two-and-a-half years later, around Christmas 2023, he got down on one knee and proposed to her in the middle of a crosswalk in downtown Cookeville, Tennessee. Shiver had his friends block traffic, and strangers on the sidewalk cheered. Farmer said it was the best day of her life.
Shiver, a two-sport athlete at his high school in Maryville, Tennessee, was a walk-on football player at Tennessee Tech. His final high school season at Maryville had been scrapped because of the COVID-19 pandemic, giving him little chance to prove he was worthy of a Division I scholarship. He wanted to play football, in part, because he loved tackling people. His sophomore season, he landed a spot in the starting lineup, then suffered a high ankle sprain in his first game.
Shortly after that, Shiver had a history class with a couple of baseball players who sat in front of him.
“They weren’t focused on history,” he said. “They had their laptops out watching YouTube videos of baseball highlights.
“I would see it, and then I started getting the baseball itch.”
He told Farmer that he wanted to try out for the baseball team, and although she was skeptical, she supported him. He practiced on the intramural fields, hitting off a tee into a chain-link fence. A few months later, after a three-year break from baseball, he made the Tennessee Tech baseball roster.
In his second season, in 2024, he hit .296 with nine home runs. Shiver entered the transfer portal for his graduate year and told every coach he talked to — including Louisville’s Dan McDonnell — that he was getting married on June 20, 2025.
He said that long before the 2025 season started, McDonnell and the Cardinals believed they’d be in Omaha that summer.
“The plan all along was to win a national championship,” Shiver said, “and it was funny, because he said something when he was recruiting me. He was like, ‘That’s going to be a great story for people like ESPN to run, because it’s going to happen.'”
Farmer, who’s working on her financial planner license, is flying home Tuesday night after the game and will resume wedding preparations. Her mom, Michelle, has served as her full-time wedding planner, taking care of all the details in Farmer’s absence — they’re serving chicken at the reception and will have a giant marquee on the dance floor that says, “The Shivers.”
“There’s not really a lot to be stressed about,” Farmer said, “because this is so fun, watching him live out a childhood dream.”
She said if he isn’t home for Thursday night’s rehearsal dinner, it’s fine. A friend will fill in.
“As long as he’s there at the end of the aisle when I walk down on Friday,” she said, “the rest we’ll figure out.”
Shiver said he’ll take a late-night flight Thursday if it’s necessary, and he’ll fly back Saturday morning. He knows one thing for certain: He isn’t missing his wedding. He said it doesn’t matter that he’s a backup — he’d be there in Louisville on Friday if he was batting cleanup.
“I’m going to be in Louisville, Kentucky, come hell or high water, on June 20, no matter what,” he said, “to marry the love of my life.”
