Funeral Held for Wife, 26, in Real-Life Fault in Our Stars Couple: 'I Wanted to See Them Grow Old Together,' Says Dad
The funeral for Katie Prager was held on Monday morning in Ewing, Kentucky – just under a week after her husband's death from complications of cystic fibrosis.
Katie, 26 died just five days after her husband Dalton Prager succumbed to the same illness. Their story led many to liken them to the young cancer patients who fell in love in the best-selling novel and 2014 film The Fault in Our Stars.
The funeral service took place at 10 a.m. at the Elizaville Christian Church, according to Katie's online obituary. She was laid to rest in the Elizaville Cemetery.
Katie requested to be buried in a cemetery close to her home [in Kentucky], her mother Debbie Donovan tells PEOPLE.
Dalton, whose funeral was held in Wentzville, Missouri, has already been cremated and his ashes will be scattered at various places.
This includes a lake that his grandfather is building on a Missouri farm that Dalton loved. The body of water will be named Lake Dalton.
Dalton's family is planning to create a memorial site there to include all of the Prager family.
Katie's "smile lit up the room whenever she walked in," her obituary said, and she had a "go get 'em" and "grab the bull by the horns" attitude.
The couple met online in 2009, when Katie, then 18, reached out to Dalton, then 17, on Facebook to connect about cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease leading to the thick buildup of mucus in the lungs and other organs. Over time, the build up restricts and worsens the ability to breathe over time.
Dalton proposed just six months after he and Katie connected, and were married in 2011.
"She looked like an angel," says Katie's father, John Donovan, told PEOPLE of his daughter on her wedding day. "I wanted to see them grow old together. I knew it wasn't going to happen, but that's what I wanted to see."
But, over time, both grew more sick, eventually entering the hospital in Aug. 2014 to receive life-saving lung transplants – Dalton's, that November, and Katie's in early 2015.
Unfortunately, Dalton developed lymphoma, and had to move back in with his parents. Because of the move, the couple had last seen each other in person only briefly, for a few minutes in Katie's Kentucky hospital room on July 16 – their fifth wedding anniversary.
Dalton died in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, after being placed in an intensive care unit. Katie died in the hospice she entered earlier this month.
After their deaths, Dalton's dad Dave Prager told PEOPLE, "Everybody's in the belief that Dalton was there to open heaven's gate for her."
He added of their romance, "Katie was just always positive reinforcement for him. That was one of their deals with each other: 'It's going to be okay, it's going to be okay.'"
• Reporting by JEFF TRUESDELL
