Columbia Love Stories 2016

"I was a senior in high school and on my tennis recruiting trip at Columbia when I first met Katie (then a CC freshman on the Women’s Tennis Team). I was immediately impressed with her graceful one-handed backhand that reminded me of a bygone era of classic tennis. What also stood out to me was that she was so friendly and cheerful, asking me tons of questions about myself to try to make me feel at ease. To be honest, this had the opposite effect and made me feel slightly uneasy. We’ve laughed about this first encounter so many times. I was a reserved and suspicious New Yorker and Katie was an outgoing and bubbly Southern California girl - it was obvious that we came from different worlds. It wasn’t until the following year, when I was a freshman at Columbia and teammates with Katie, that we really got to know one another. We soon became inseparable, she the yin to my yang, and it slowly became obvious to everyone that we were much more than just friends.

Fast forward eighteen years and we’re still inseparable, now settled in San Francisco after years of chasing each other around the globe and living in Washington D.C., San Diego, New York and Colorado. I am happy and proud to announce that we just got married on October 30, 2015 (elatedly following the Supreme Court decision to allow same sex couples to marry across the U.S.). Our wedding was a small but elegant affair, with the ceremony being on the Mayor’s Balcony at San Francisco’s City Hall and the reception at the Legion of Honor - it was the perfect setting, surrounded by Rodin sculptures. Having Rodin’s “Thinker” at the Legion of Honor was a primary factor in choosing this venue, as it brought us back to our wonderful days together on the steps, in the classroom and on the courts at Columbia University."

"Dear Cupid:

We met in October 1946. We were two loving freshman. We married in March of 1950. We were together until Nada's death in 2004. Nada and Ray, Barnard and Columbia are inseparable in my mind and memories. On this her birthday, I thank Barnard and Columbia for the greatest of gifts!"

"Crystal was in the mechanical engineering track and Mark started at Columbia engineering through the 3-2 program in 2007. We both had the same course load through our junior and senior year, but did not meet until we were randomly assigend to the same group project to build a robotic index finger our senior year-first semester. Jokes ensued when our group programmed the finger to motion "come hither" and our friendship grew through late night study groups, nerdy jokes, and a snowboarding PE class in early spring 2009 that show us each others not-so-graceful sides. Our first official date was actually on 2/14/2009 (Valentine's Day 2009) and we continued our relationship after graduation for 3+ years of semi-long distance (Crystal worked in NYC, and Mark worked in CT) when Mark relocated to NYC. We pride ourselves in the fun and beautiful relationship that grew between two engineering nerds.

Fast forward to 10/24/15 when we married on campus at St. Paul's Chapel and celebrated with family, friends, and many SEAS & CC 2009 alums.

Happy Valentine's Day to future engineering couples! Nerdy love is the best kind of love 🙂."

"We met on a blind date after finals the spring of our junior year, fixed up by a classmate of mine at Barnard and a former high school classmate of Jeremy’s from Francis Parker School in Chicago. Jeremy was Columbia College ’67; I was Barnard ’67. For that first blind date, we went to Butler Hall, which if anyone remembers, had white tablecloths and roses as a centerpiece on each table. Summer came and we started dating again in the fall of our senior year.

Jeremy proposed in the spring of 1967, at about the same time that he received a letter awarding him a Kellett Fellowship for two years to study Classics at Jesus College, Cambridge. I had also been accepted into the Master’s program at Columbia Graduate Faculties for a degree in history. I received the degree in 1968, which you may recall coincided with the uprising at Columbia. Email and texts didn’t exist in 1967; we wrote letters to each other every day on little blue aerograms.

We were married in September 1968, and spent our honeymoon year in Cambridge. We lived in an unheated flat owned by Jesus College. It was a truly extraordinary experience, with long walks holding hands through college courtyards, learning how to cook British “topside” and make it edible, marveling at cultural differences, and most importantly, being together after that long year of separation.

We came back to the US and Jeremy went to Yale Law School. I subsequently went to Columbia Architecture School when we moved back to New York from New Haven. (We took turns working and paying the bills while each of us went to graduate school.) Jeremy clerked for a Federal judge, worked as a federal prosecutor in the SDNY and subsequently became a litigation partner at Shearman & Sterling. I worked as a senior urban designer for the Manhattan Office of the Department of City Planning and then started my own company making educational children’s products. Our son, Josh, was born in 1978 and our daughter, Abby, in 1983.

Our marriage of almost 41 years ended in July 2009, when Jeremy died.

After living for most of our married lives in a brownstone in Carroll Gardens, I am back living now on Morningside Heights, auditing classes at Barnard and experiencing, in a surreal way, the memories of that Barnard/Columbia love story.

"I am SIPA-CBS '15 and my wife, Miki, is Mailman MPH '14. We met on Valentine's Day in 2013 at a 'LGBT Intergraduate School Speed Dating Mixer.' She will tell you that she was forced to go by friends and that it was the lamest thing she had ever heard of. I was pumped when I heard about the event and remember telling the organizer to 'tell all the girls!' (that I would be there).

We met early in the event near the 'bar' area. I extended my hand to greet her and (very geekily) introduced myself as 'from the business school.' She, of course, rolled her eyes and said she studied public health. I asked if her name was Japanese, and she asked me what I knew about Japan. It was a fun conversation, so I followed her around to the various stations (it was not the kind of speed dating you have seen on television). She was a little shy too, but I had won over her friend who invited me to an after party. The next two years were filled with study dates in Lehman, bites at Mel's, and weekends writing theses.

We got married the day after my SIPA graduation in May of 2015 at City Hall and celebrated with our closest family and friends (many from Columbia!). We just know this email will ensure our names end up in a special alumni fundraising list, but we don't mind. We'll always have fond memories of our time on campus."

"I was a fourth year medical student at P&S, in the midst of a medical rotation at Goldwater Memorial Hospital. I rode an ambulance with an elderly patient, bringing her to an appointment at the Vanderbilt Clinic. We entered via the ambulance entrance. Some distance away, standing behind the reception desk was a most attractive nurse. On my part, it was love at first sight. Diana and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in 2015."

"It was 1969 and I arrived at Bard Hall at the Medical School campus at 168th St. That first weekend night there was to be a mixer with the Nursing School. During the afternoon I was at the bookstore and met some first year nursing students who had started 1 week earlier. They insisted I come to the mixer and meet one of their friends. Back in the dorm an upper classman told me that the new nursing students would want to see our cadavers. I brushed this off as absurd.

That night I was introduced to Joanne. Long red hair, very young looking face, confident, wanted to dance and yes…wanted to see the cadavers. For the next 20 nights we would meet for 15 cent pony glass beers at Tropical Garden (TG’s) bar on Broadway & 169th St. Dated on and off for 2 years. Joanne graduated in 1971 and traveled to Europe before working at Presbyterian Hospital. I met her in Amsterdam and we decided to get married. At Trader Vics at the Plaza Hotel I gave her a ring and we married in my 4th year. We are now filled with 44 years of memories as we leave for a 3 week cruise of the western Mediterranean and will celebrate Valentine's Day in Rome. "

"My close friend and fraternity brother asked me to double date with him and a Barnard girl whom he was seeing. The girl asked her best friend at Barnard to do the same. My friend and the girl he was dating never saw one another again. My blind date is still going on --- over 50 years, two children and 5 grandchildren later.

Columbia and Barnard were never so close."

"Upon entering CUSSW, I didn't really speak with the cute, long-haired guy in the back of our research class.

It wasn't until our second year, when we were in three of the same classes, that we began to fall in love. I kept forgetting to purchase notebooks, so I borrowed paper from him practically every class. I remember the first time I spoke to him that year, I was blown away by his kindness and his humor. We quickly became classroom buddies. We have several Columbia friends to thank for our first date. Firstly, Geoff got my number from a fellow classmate and sent me pictures from a Mets game that they attended. Following that, another group of friends made plans to attend a play downtown, (Fuerza Bruta), and as luck would have it, there was an extra ticket. After a fantastic night at the theater, talking in a coffee house with our classmates, and a stroll through the park near my apartment, I was smitten.

I will always remember fondly our time at Columbia- our weekly lunches at the Teachers College, our study sessions at Low, and our walks together after our field placements, which were both in downtown Brooklyn a few blocks from each other. Upon graduation, we moved in together, moved to Boston for a few years to start our careers, and now have purchased a home in the Hudson Valley. Geoff and I are the proud parents of a beautiful daughter, Olivia Rose, born in September, 2014. When I think of my time at Columbia and all of the wonderful experiences and things that I learned, meeting Geoff was absolutely the thing that I am the most grateful for. I cannot imagine life without him."

"Josie and I have been together since 1985 – my first year in my Ph.D. program in the B-School.

She was in the School of General Studies; met her in the gym when I was working out.

She finished her UG (as a returning adult student) in 1988 and I completed my Ph.D. in 1991 – couldn’t have done it without her.

We went to Penn State in 1989 and after 12 ½ years there, moved to University of Vermont.

We’ve been together more than 30 years – and done the whole civil union then marriage thing in the great state of Vermont.

Together we raised her teenage children and now brag about our grandchildren; one of whom will graduate from high school this year while the other two are in elementary and junior high.

Where has the time gone?

Our studies at Columbia were a very important part of our lives.

I’m especially appreciative of the influences of William Newman, Kathryn Harrigan, Joel Brockner, John Whitney, Don Morrison, Jim Coen, the Reference Librarian in the Uris Hall Library, and Delores and Joy – two amazing support staff on the seventh floor."

"It sounds so dated--and it is!--but I met my future wife, Julie Wells (Barnard ’81), partly because I came back to campus a week early in the fall of my sophomore year to go to a Grateful Dead concert in New Jersey. That’s a story unto itself, but the key point is that this landed me right in the middle of freshman orientation. The evening after the show, my classmate Keith and I were walking along Broadway, when Keith said hello to an upper classman coming toward us surrounded by a pack of Barnard freshmen, like a nucleus surrounded by electrons (yes, I took “Physics for Poets”). As Keith talked to the upper classman--whose name I can’t remember but who deserves partial credit for bringing me together with my future wife--the rest of us stood around. This was right in front of the West End. I was wearing a T-shirt depicting the rainbow-over-the-earth cover art of the Dead’s album 'Europe ’72,' but without any identifying text. As I stood there, one of the young women--the one who had already caught my eye--gestured toward my shirt and said, 'Great album.' No, that wasn’t the reason I fell for her, but it did break the ice. When it started to drizzle, she pulled her corduroy jacket over her head. As Holden Caulfield might say, that killed me. The corduroy jacket looked like the stylized hair in the depiction of some Egyptian goddess.

The rain let up, we bought some beer at Ta-Kome, and we all sat on Furnald Lawn and drank it. Julie and I just talked to each other. Every so often, one of the others lobbed a teasing remark in our direction. We didn’t care. We got married in the fall of 1981."

"Adi and I first met on the pre-business school Hamptons trip in August 2013. I remember seeing her walk into a restaurant and immediately recognizing her from our class Facebook page (she had obviously made quite an impression on me!). She walked up to me and introduced herself, “Hi, I’m Adi!” she said excitedly. Everyone at business school was super excited during those first few weeks, this had nothing to do with meeting me, in fact she doesn’t even remember this moment. We connected over a few games of ping pong on that trip and our friendship grew from there. During our first year at business school we didn’t date (actually…she wasn’t single) but we became part of the same friends circle and grew close. Adi and I were born 4 days apart, her on Feb 22 and me on Feb 26. Adi organized my first birthday at business school. I wasn’t kind enough to return the favor, I even refused to have a joint party (don’t ask why). At the end of our first year, Adi left for Singapore for her summer internship at Google. I stayed in New York for mine.

When we all returned to school for our second year, Adi and I started hanging out more often (she was also single now). On our first unofficial date (one of those, “we’re just going as friends” dates) we went to the Broadway show, Book of Mormon. Within 2 months, we were dating. That year, we travelled to South Africa, India and Japan together (this was business school after all). We spent hours sitting on the steps of Low Library eating Milano sandwiches and talking about the future. And we spent weekends playing Settlers of Catan with our closest friends. Naturally, with such an awesome companion, second year flew by. At graduation, we got our parents to meet and even sit together at the ceremony. That summer, Adi flew off to Seattle to start her new job. Again, I stayed in New York.

The August after we graduated, I proposed, and she said yes (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this obviously!). We were still living three thousand miles apart but were closer than ever. Now we’re busy planning our wedding, which is less than 3 months away! Unfortunately it clashes with our first school reunion, but there’ll be many more of those, and we plan to stay connected to Columbia for a long time. For Adi and I, Columbia was awesome in every way possible and we both really miss our time there."

"It was 11:00pm on a February night and it was quiet in the Metallurgy Lab. I was a junior and I loved that fact that I could come in late at night to finish my metallurgy labs. It was a quiet time for me to collect my thoughts and plan what needed to be done in the upcoming days. That night while I was polishing my metal sample on the diamond wheel, my reverie was interrupted by the swift bang of the lab door, opening and shutting. I looked up and saw a 6-foot husky, broad-shouldered, well-built guy wearing a heavy winter coat, dirty overalls, and construction boots. It appeared he rushed to get to the lab. He said “Hi” and with the ease of familiarity, he cut his metal samples and placed them in epoxy molds, getting ready to polish his samples. I didn’t recognize him as one of the metallurgy students. The metallurgy department was so small. After 6 months in the department, I thought I knew everyone. He introduced himself as Dan and I commented that I didn’t think I had met him before. He then explained that he was a senior and majoring in metallurgy. The reason that I probably didn’t see him was because he and his friend owned a construction business and that he installed kitchens and air conditioners. He only came to campus for classes and labs. The rest of the time he worked in order to pay for college. Then a lightbulb went off in my head, I realized that this was the guy the metallurgy graduate students were talking about the other day. The guy who was able to take a full load of engineering courses and manage a business at the same time. We talked for two hours in that lab. He hoped to get a fellowship with Columbia’s Metallurgy Department the following year to pay for his graduate degree. He did get that fellowship which allowed us to see each other at a more regular basis and our friendship soon turned to love. So, thank you Columbia for bringing us together and keeping that Metallurgy Lab open so late. We have been together for 32 years and still going strong."

"We met on a Columbia sponsored geology field trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jim was freshly back from Vietnam and I had worked for several years in the mining industry after my undergraduate work. He was a geology major in the College, class of '68 and I was in the Henry Krumb School of Engineering Master's program, graduated in '72. We were both older than the other students, had seen some of the world and got on well. After a series of adventures, we married in 1977. Happy ever since!"

"I met my future husband and the love of my life on my very first Friday night at Barnard.

In those days, Sabbath services were held at Earl Hall followed by a student cooked dinner. My roommate and I were anxious to meet all the upperclassmen, but in the rush of bodies we missed out on a seat in the main dining room and were relegated to a long table in the hallway.

To say the least we were visibly upset we were outsiders on our very first weekend. Luckily for me, many upperclassmen were also at the hallway table and right away I noticed a tall, outgoing, handsome sophomore. We struck up a conversation and I knew I wanted to get to know him better. In the following weeks, we saw each other often at meal plan, I would strategically time my dinners to coincide with his, but still we were just acquaintances. Then in early November we were both happened to travel to Penn for a weekend event. A mutual friend suggested that we train down together and over the next few days, we shared some quality time. I was still convinced that Marty was merely being polite and was not really interested in me.

And then it finally happened: It was the last weekend of school and again a Friday night. I saw him from a distance and as Marty says I bounced over in my little pink sweater with a big smile on my face. Marty will tell you that he was about to ask another girl out for a post finals date, but I know better; timing is everything and so as I jumped in front of him with a big grin he asked, "Would you like to go out on Tuesday night.'

Well that was 33 ½ years ago. We dated on and off for 5 years and this year we will celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary. Graduate school, cross country relocations and along the way as full partners we raised three kids.

Today, one son is married and in med school, our daughter is a senior at Barnard and our youngest son is a freshman at Columbia. We will always be a Columbia family and we thank Barnard/Columbia not just for our incredible educations, but for giving us the greatest gift- the gift of love."

"It was the Fall semester of ’92. I was sitting next to a friend I had made during orientation the week prior- in an old musty physics lecture room in the basement of Pupin during the first real day of classes.

She started walking up the steps looking for a seat, notebooks held in her crossed arms, a V-neck white t-shirt and a simple black mini skirt. I noticed her immediately. My mouth hit the floor.

As she looked over the crowd for a familiar face and an open seat- I wished two things, one that I wasn’t in the aisle seat and two that the seat next to me was empty.

She gazed in my direction and I could swear her eyes lit up- they did. But it was my friend she was looking at and the unoccupied seat next to him that she wanted. You see they had become friends too during orientation week. I turned my legs to make space for her to walk in the row, catching a full gaze at her beautiful long black hair that stretched fully to her middle back. I was hooked!

Micah this Cheryl, Cheryl this is Micah' my friend introduced us as we shook hands. 'Nice to meet you…' I said but she was already fully in conversation with my friend and I was out of the picture.

For the next several weeks I made a point of bumping into her, walking completely across the quad if necessary, if I thought I saw her- just to have a chance to say “hi” as I passed her.

Fortunately for me we were freshman engineers (some dork love story) so we had a bunch of the same classes. I made a point of finagling my way into as many of her study groups as I could. It must have been obvious…

After a week or two of me trying my clandestine work of being wherever she was as often as I could be, she started to acknowledge me by name. Then one day it happened, we finished a class in Mudd and were with a bunch of classmates standing next to the bronze engineer trying to decide where to go next. She said “FBH”, I concurred and no one else did. So for the first time we walked and talked alone- on our way to lunch at Ferris Booth Hall. Thankfully it was literally from one corner of the campus to the other.

I’m not sure when we became official, but I kissed her on October 27, 1992. So somewhere in the middle we dated I guess???

We were engaged the summer of our Junior year on July 28, 2005. We got married immediately after our senior year on October 5, 1996.

This May will be our 20th reunion from Columbia but more important for me, this October will be our 20th wedding anniversary! We have two beautiful children, a boy and a girl- and frequently we drive them from our home in Westchester to show them where 'Dad fell in love with Mom!'"

"My husband Blake and I met on COOP. We were on cross-groups, meaning we started at different ends of the same trail, meeting up for one night in the middle of the trip. When we met, we learned that we were neighbors in the same small town in Connecticut, and despite crossing paths many times before, never actually met.

We were friends through college, and started dating soon after graduation. We got married 7 years later (surrounded by all of our Columbia friends) and now, almost 11 years after graduating, we're expecting our first child in March."

"..My husband Jacob and I also met at Columbia. We actually met the first day of Metropolitan Arts & Culture, a defunct orientation program that ran for a few days before the official start of freshman year (former Dean, Richard Sluzarcyzk, ran it). We didn’t hit it off. But, we did both make a very good mutual friend, Christopher B. ’99CC. When Christopher was trying to gather a group of 4 people together to make up a suite in Ruggles Hall for our senior year, he tapped Jacob (Koby) and me. The first day we moved into the suite, in the late summer of 1998, we became instant best friends and started dating about two months later. We married in June 2000 and have two children, 6-1/2 and 8 (hopefully, future Columbians!)."

"I was at Columbia as a Ford Scholar when I met Roz (Barnard) on a blind date; however, she was out with my best friend. But that was not to be. We 'bumped' into each other soon after and had many late night burgers at Riker's and pizzas at V&T. It was the pizzas that sewed up the match! We were married in May 1958 and just celebrated our 57th anniversary, 2 children and 4 grandchildren later. We still share a love for Columbia College and Barnard and are active in our class affairs."

"When my husband and I were getting married (1992!) there were only three non-denominational chapels in NYC, and we chose Columbia’s because it was the prettiest—and because it had enormous standing candelabras that were gothic enough to thrill a very young couple who were very nervous about getting married! Five years later, I was looking for a place to get my MFA and thought of that lovely campus where we got married… 'It was really academic-feeling,' I told my husband, 'I think I’ll apply there.' Imagine my surprise (and delight!) when I discovered upon acceptance that Columbia’s SOA writing program was among the top in the country! It has been more than twenty years and I now run a literary nonprofit—and am still married! Maybe we should renew our vows in that "pretty little chapel on that academic-feeling campus" on our silver anniversary…"

"My fiancé Kevin (Track and Field, CC) and I (Archery, BC) met in our sophomore year at a Leaders for Life seminar through the Athletics Department. It was pretty much love at first sight, from our second date at surf and turf night in John Jay to the tree lighting ceremonies with hot chocolate on college walk. After graduation this past may, we moved out to Vancouver, Washington and as was only fitting, Kevin proposed on a bridge overlooking the Columbia river! Columbia is where our love story began and our wedding next summer will feature many of our Columbia Lion friends in the wedding party."

"I met my husband Kieran at Columbia as we were both doing our MPA. After spending 1 year in my home town in Paris, he came to NY where we met and started dating quickly. Him from Australia, I from France, who would have thought? 4 years later, we live together in Geneva and have been happily married for a year.

SIPA was as much an amazing experience for our career as for our love life 🙂"

"I thought I would share our recent wedding with you given our close affiliation with Columbia:

Patrick and Antoinette O. '11 were married on Boxing Day 2015 at The Church of Notre Dame, on Morningside Heights.

Given Patrick’s two Columbia Masters degrees and Antoinette’s MBA, they knew they wanted to show their appreciation for Alma Mater since it was through a mutual CBS friend, Eleanor C. '03CC, '11BUS that they had initially met. After visiting the Church and meeting with University Chaplain Monsignor John Paddack, they knew they had found the perfect setting for their union. The Church, built in 1916, is known for its stone grotto altar, a soaring marble dome and sharing a centenary celebration with Columbia Business School!

Patrick is Head of Development for the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division at the University of Oxford and adjunct faculty at Columbia. Antoinette is a Chief Operational Officer in Counterparty Portfolio Management at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London. The couple reside in Notting Hill.

The wedding was attended by many Columbians representing the College, Business School, Law School, Professional Studies and SIPA. One of the proud (and certainly loud!) moments of the day was the introduction of the couple at the Del Posto reception to the Columbia Fight Song, Roar Lion Roar!"

"Hugh and I met towards the end of my sophomore and his junior years at the College when I was actually dating one of his teammates on the Heavyweight Rowing team. Our friendship grew over the following year as we took several courses together with Professor Selig. My relationship with his teammate ended and the friendship turned into something more.

After I graduated the College and went on to Columbia Law School we moved in together and were married on the island of St. Kitts in the spring of 1996. 20 years and three beautiful children later, our Columbia love story continues."

"A challenging class in music theory and analysis, taught by the inimitable, brilliant, sometimes controversial, and heavily French-accented Professor Jacques-Louis Monod was where we met. I was a master's student in composition and Art was working on a doctorate in composition, courtesy of the GI bill, as he was a Vietnam war era army band veteran.

We connected over many things, including of course, a passionate love of music. To this day we still mimic Prof. Monod's crazy English pronunciations. Our first date was to hear jazz at the legendary West End -- how sad that it's no longer there.

The year I received my master's degree was the year we married -- 1978. Art received his D.M.A. in 1981. We recently were back at Columbia in, October,2015 to attend the first annual David Sive Memorial Lecture in Environmental Law, with other family members.

We are something of a Columbia family: David, my late father, and Mary, my mother, also met at Columbia, in the 1940s. My father was a distinguished grad of Columbia Law School, who, like Art, attended on the G.I. bill. Later on, he taught environmental law and litigation at Columbia Law.

Attached is a photo of Art and me last fall at Columbia. We were happy to be back on such a special occasion, and, by the way, to have discovered that the Hungarian Pastry Shop is still going strong, even as the West End remains a place of fond memory."

"Debby and I met once before starting at CBS in 2012. At the time I was living in Washington DC and helped organize happy hours for admitted Columbia students, one of whom was Debby. We weren't close but when we started school in August we ended up in the same cluster of 70 people. Since we took most of our classes together we got to know each other better. I always thought of her as having a contagious smile and liked how welcoming and caring she was with her friends (frankly I'm afraid of asking her what her opinion of me at the time was).

Time passed and at the end of our first year we had to fill out a survey with superlatives for our cluster mates. One of the questions was "Who is someone who always lights up your day?". It took me less that a second to come up with the answer, after which I instantly realized that I wanted to be with someone like Debby, who can always bring a smile to my face. I asked her out shortly after that and we've been together since.

We got engaged last May and are currently planning our wedding in Colombia and Hong Kong, our home countries."

"We met while studying Arabic at Columbia and started dating in early fall 2006. We probably wouldn’t have found many opportunities to meet since Steven studied computer science and I studied anthropology. However, Steven's interest in linguistics and my passion for other cultures and languages led us to each other. A couple of years ago, we took our engagement photos on Columbia's campus, a special and meaningful place for both of us. We married in New York last year. This Valentine's Day marks our first as a married couple."

"My wife, Warongsiri, and I are both Columbia graduate of class Master in Real Estate Development of 2011. We met during class and due to the share passion in Real Estate our love grow as the semester passes. She is good with numbers, very good – so I ask her to teach me accounting and real estate finance – and that’s where we got started.

Since we both love Real Estate, which in effect mean buildings and skyscrapers – I asked her out on a rooftop of a 61 stories hotel called Banyan Tree in Bangkok where we visited over the holiday on 5th January. It was a success. We started dating. We studied, we traveled, we worked, we had long distant relationship, and after many adventures we got married on 2nd November 2012.

Yes, I asked her to marry me on another rooftop. It worked as well.

Over the course of our relationship, we traveled together a lot. We visited several cities around the world. We are blessed many friends from Columbia who conveniently situated everywhere in the world, which give us excuse to visit them. Because of this we get to visit different real estate around the world too!

After our marriage, we started our family in Phuket and on 13th February 2014, my wife gave birth to our first daughter. We named her 'Serene' signifying the clear and blue sky of Phuket Island.

All human has their strong and weak points. My wife and I are somewhat different and yet we shared many many interests and many memories and hardship together. I think we complete each other very well. Now we have been together for 5 years with a two years old beautiful daughter, we are very happy.

I promised her to be with her until the day she dies. It is a promise I intend to keep. 'Grow old together.'"

"So, on June 18th this year I’ll marry the man of my life.

I met him on Jan 19th 2010, while we were both @CBS (he is class of 2010 and I am 2011).

We met during a week-end trip to Washington DC.

We have not been together during BSchool and we spent full 2012 in 2 continents (I was in Europe, he was in US first and then South America).

Despite the huge distance and the fact that we were 'only friends' we kept on writing emails, text, chat on daily basis till Jan 2013, when he came back to IT.

On Jan 2013 we started dating and our love story started officially in March.

I love him so much and looking forward to starting my life with him as a couple!"