Well, we must define pray here. If you ask your friends to pray for you, are you in fact praying to them?
"Ecclesiastes 9:5 “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten."
I would simply point out that God is the God of the living, not the dead. Those who leave this world in the faith do not die, as Christ promised, but find life everlasting. You may think that believers find no further reward, and are just dead, but the Church does not. We follow the teachings of the Apostles and of Christ and pray for one another, and ask for prayers from fellow believers. This includes those who being absent from the body are "present with the Lord" as St. Paul indicated. The "dead" have nothing to do with it.
You never knew St. Augustine and he never knew you...He is not a friend of yours...The only one in Heaven who knows all of His own is Jesus Christ...
And if you keep a statue of your Uncle Hermy dangling from your rear view mirror and pray to the statue or you kneel before the statue of some other dead person, YES, you are praying TO that person as well as worshipping that person...