Sickles made Teresa Bagioli's acquaintance again in 1851, this time as an Assemblyman. (He was connected to the Tammany Hall Democratic machine). He was thirty-three years old, she was fifteen. Sickles was quite taken with Teresa and soon proposed marriage. The Bagiolis refused to consent to the marriage. Undeterred, the couple wed on September 17, 1852, in a civil ceremony, as it appears Teresa was already pregnant. Teresa's family relented and the couple married again in a Catholic ceremony, with Fr John Hughes, Catholic Archbishop of New York City, presiding. Some seven months later, in 1853, their only child, Laura Buchanan Sickles, was born.