Columbia Love Stories 2018

"My fiance Christian and I met in the fall of 2014 in front of the Mechanical Engineering Department. I was dropping some homework off when I heard him speaking in Arabic with his friend as he was showing him around campus. I approached him and asked, ‘Are you Lebanese?’ and he said yes. It turned out we were from the same country! This was the start of a great friendship that lasted until the spring of 2016 when we started dating. I had started my graduate studies at MIT after Columbia when Christian also got accepted into a graduate program at MIT. It was a dream come true for us to be able to go to school together again. When he first arrived in Boston in May 2017, we went to New York for the weekend to pay a visit to our Alma Mater. While we were walking in front of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Christian got down on one knee and proposed to me where we had first met two and a half years ago! Columbia will forever have a special place in our hearts."

“My wife and I met for the first time at a bowling night during freshman orientation in 1997. It wasn't until spring break sophomore year when we both happened to stay on campus that we began dating. The first date was at a restaurant, which no longer exists, called Sophia's, on Amsterdam and 111th Street.

Fast forward 20 years and we are still together and living in Manhattan. We also have a 4-year-old daughter named Vesper. We hope she will attend Columbia University one day.

"Jared and I are sophomores. Although this isn't a traditional love story, we are very cute best friends. Here we are at the Women’s March. Thank you, Columbia, for an education in LOVE."

“Our first conversation was an argument about politics. We were in the same condo during Columbia Ski Club’s training trip in January of 2013 and many beers were imbibed. Later that week, she poured an entire beer on my head after a party and giggled. A couple nights after that, we had a pasta fight during dinner. We spent our days racing each other through the trees. Naturally, I was smitten. It was during these earlier times that we began to notice some startling coincidences.

Coincidence (or Providence) #1: During the training trip, Alena saw my snowboard bag, which had the name Sportkiefer Freiburg on it. I happened to have studied abroad a decade prior in Freiburg, Germany, a town where Alena has strong family ties and visits often.

Coincidence (or Providence) #2: Before Alena and I met, I’d already applied to several MFA programs. I was accepted to the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana, where Alena’s grandfather has been a philosophy professor since the early ‘70s. I later audited his Epistemology class.

Coincidence (or Providence) #3: While I was studying abroad in Germany, I spent a few days snowboarding in Zermatt, Switzerland, at roughly the same time that Alena and her family were skiing there. We’re still trying to figure out if we could have been on a tram together.

Coincidence (or Providence) #4: We are both huge bike nerds.

After graduating from Columbia, I moved to Missoula, Montana, but our adventures together continued. We saw each other later that summer, hiked Mt. Sentinel, and bushwhacked to an old moonshine cabin behind her grandfather’s house. Alena continued to visit during her breaks, and after skiing, hiking, and many outdoor adventures, we fell in love. Alena moved to Missoula after graduating, but not because of me, she claims. We live in a goofy A-frame in the mountains now. We still argue about politics and snowboard/ski in the trees, but we avoid pasta fights.”

“I met my wife in dental school. I was a senior and she was a sophomore. She was easily the most beautiful woman on campus and took my attention. We had so much fun and found a lot of common ground despite almost impossible differences.

Unfortunately for our relationship, I was finishing school and applying to a six-year oral surgery residency program. After interviewing across the country, it became obvious for numerous reasons that I should stay at Columbia. Of course, she was one of those reasons.

So, I stayed and our love grew stronger throughout the additional six years at Columbia. So much that we got married five years into the relationship. Now, this would have been shorter had we not faced strong Jewish and Muslim family background conflict things. But as a testament to our love and an example for the world, we are happily married with two beautiful Columbia babies.

We are always thankful for our Columbia experience. We both graduated with much more than we initially hoped for. Happy V Day, all.”

"My boyfriend Gabriel and I both went to the Columbia SPS M.Sc. Sports Management program. He graduated last year and I just graduated a couple of months ago.

We first met a year and a half ago at the Dodge Fitness Center. We went to a ‘Football 101’ info session. We're both international students (he's from Brazil and I'm from Israel) and wanted to learn more about America's favorite sport. We fell in love almost instantly and have been together since that night! Today, we are living together in Lower Manhattan. I always dreamed of going to Columbia for a supreme educational and cultural experience, but finding love was a pleasant, unexpected surprise that made my Columbia experience better than I could have imagined."

“My husband Jacob and I met the summer after our freshmen year while participating in the Columbia in Beijing program at Peking University. He lived across the hall from me and we became friends over many shared meals and adventures in China. When we returned to campus in the fall, we were quickly inseparable and have been together ever since.

This is the 12th year of our relationship and 6th year of our marriage (!) and we were that couple you saw getting married on campus. In May 2012, we were married in an interfaith (Jewish and Methodist) ceremony in Saint Paul's led by a woman officiant under a beautiful chuppah. The ceremony music was performed by a quarter led by '09CC Maryam Parhizkar and our programs were in English and Mandarin, for our families. We were fortunate enough to have our wedding announced in the Times, which made our parents super proud.

After graduation, we moved out to San Francisco for work and have been here ever since. I'm in Business Development for Google Cloud, focused on financial services, health, and Big Compute partnerships. Jacob started his own hedge fund, Cable Car Capital, which is growing steadily and reporting strong results. While at Google, I also earned my part-time MBA from Berkeley-Haas.

The most exciting change in our lives was about three years ago when we adopted our dog, Aristotle 'Ari.’. We named him Aristotle because he is peripatetic and we are fans of the Core.

I'm very thankful that both Jacob and I went to Columbia and met each other there. Our family is a wonderful blend of Jewish, Chinese, and American identities, which feels very Columbian and very New York.

We hope that Columbia is the site of many more lifelong romances. Happy Valentine's Day!”

“From 1964 to 1966, long before the College was co-ed, I had the delightful privilege and high honor of serving as Lion Mascot. My lion suit was not the current androgynous Disney figure of Roar-ee. Rather, it was a nearly seven-foot high, dangerous-looking, full theater costume, and I looked out on the world through a slit of netting in the toothy mouth of the beast.

In the fall of 1964, a classmate with a date from out of town for a home game football weekend asked, asked again, and then begged me to impress his date by coming into the stands and greeting her at halftime. So, just as halftime began, I lumbered up stands, found the couple, raised the costume up to its full height, roared, gave the somewhat terrified girl I could barely see an appropriately enthusiastic lion hug, and then turned around to scamper back to the field to be part of the band show.

Fast forwarding 18 months finds me in Washington, D.C. as a summer intern for U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits. I was quite taken with one of the other interns and figured I could dazzle her with tales of Columbia, particularly my years as lion. As soon as I started in, she looked at me in shocked amazement. ‘You were the lion that attacked me in the stands?!’ she said. That outrageous coincidence sealed the deal, and we were married a year later. As Sandy is fond of saying, ‘Michael pawed me even before he met me.’”

“My wife Ann and I met on blind date at Village Vanguard. We have since been married for 60 years. Happy Valentines to all Columbians!”

We met on day one at Columbia Business School in a required class called, “Conceptual Foundations.”

We had both moved to NYC in August 1976 from Boston where we had lived parallel lives, attending college, and working afterward, but it was in the Business School that our paths first crossed.

We became friends but always dated other people, never each other, until many years later in the Hamptons, where we ran a “share house” together for years.

In 1985, we finally married. Fast forward 32 years later, we have just married our only child, Gillian, this past December.

"Paolomi and I met in 2013 at Columbia University while working towards our PhD degrees in Chemistry. I had just transferred to Columbia after my PhD advisor accepted a new position at Columbia. It was a fortuitous move. I met my best friend and companion who was also a PhD student. Though we come from very different worlds (I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis and she in a big city in India), finding common ground was effortless. We really enjoyed our time together in New York City. Columbia will always have a special place in our heart as it marked the start of our life together. Even though we’re temporarily half a world away now, our love grows even stronger.

"I met my husband of 30+ years through Columbia's Historic Preservation (HP) program. In the fall of 1985, I met my husband, Glenn, who was a second-year student during my freshman year. We spent the following summer of 1986 in a small hill town in Italy called Civita di Bagnoregio (new Orvieto) where we worked for an architect (Astra Zarina) who owned property in town and needed us to produce measured drawings of her site in ruins, and the project became the basis of my HP thesis.

During the summer, Glenn and I got engaged and we were married in August 15, 1987. We have two children, Nino and Bella. In 2012 we celebrated our 25th anniversary with a party in Civita di Bagnoregio."

“On January 31, 1971, we engaged while staying in an international house where my brother in law was an LLM student. I went on an internship on the Holland America Line SS New Amsterdam and returned to Holland in June. I was faithful to my fiancé and had no relationship with anyone during that period.

When I came home, she told me that she had a boyfriend. She thought that two boyfriends would be OK for all of us since after all it was 1971 and we lived in Amsterdam. With my provincial and religious background, I found that unacceptable and said, “Either he’s out or I’m out!” I was out. She later married him and is still happily married. I had several girlfriends and married 7 years later with the love of my life and am still married, as well. As couples, we see each other, have dinner, play tennis together, attend each others’ weddings, funerals, etc.

Last December, it was 37 years ago on the day that we exchanged rings in the Russian Tearoom near Carnegie Hall after a concert and slept on the floor in that very small room in International House.

“On January 31, 1971, we engaged while staying in an international house where my brother in law was an LLM student. I went on an internship on the Holland America Line SS New Amsterdam and returned to Holland in June. I was faithful to my fiancé and had no relationship with anyone during that period.

When I came home, she told me that she had a boyfriend. She thought that two boyfriends would be OK for all of us since after all it was 1971 and we lived in Amsterdam. With my provincial and religious background, I found that unacceptable and said, “Either he’s out or I’m out!” I was out. She later married him and is still happily married. I had several girlfriends and married 7 years later with the love of my life and am still married, as well. As couples, we see each other, have dinner, play tennis together, attend each others’ weddings, funerals, etc.

Last December, it was 37 years ago on the day that we exchanged rings in the Russian Tearoom near Carnegie Hall after a concert and slept on the floor in that very small room in International House.

"My future husband Zachary and I were the first to arrive at the kosher table set up outside of John Jay during orientation week for Columbia College, class of 2017. To be perfectly honest, I don't remember it, though he does. Nevertheless, we became friends. I dragged him down from the tenth floor of Carman to hang out with me and our other friends on the mezzanine. In winter of our freshman year, when I had started dating someone else, Zachary told me 'I was hoping that could have been me.'

We went back and forth, awkwardly, for another half-year. Finally, after that other relationship ended and Zachary rescued me from a tick-infested sublet on the east side of Morningside Park, we began dating.

He proposed thirty minutes after finishing his last sophomore spring final exam, outside of John Jay, in the spot where we met (according to a plan that we had hatched together). When we got married a year later, we had to move off-campus, because married couples are not allowed to live in undergraduate on-campus housing.

So, our freshman year marked our year as friends. Our sophomore year marked our year of dating. Our junior year marked our year of engagement. And our senior year marked our first year of marriage."

"My boyfriend, Keven, and I met three years ago at the Columbia School of Social Work. We spent our entire first year basically ignoring each other on purpose, thanks to the preconceived notions we had (neither of us thought the other would be interested).

It wasn't until we came back from winter break that we found ourselves in the same apartment during a mutual friend's dinner party. Keven was alone in the corner controlling the music and me being a music lover, appreciated his taste and the songs he was playing. I finally worked up the courage to go sit next to him so that I could "request songs." We started talking and found out that we both had a lot in common. We exchanged numbers as friends (and have been talking every single day since then for the last three years ❤).

About a month after getting to know each other, he asked me to be his girlfriend. Turns out he liked me all along but I had no idea! Since then, we've graduated together, traveled a bunch, and relocated to California to continue our careers as social workers. We have an adorable puppy and will always have CSSW to thank for bringing us together."

"My boyfriend, Keven, and I met three years ago at the Columbia School of Social Work. We spent our entire first year basically ignoring each other on purpose, thanks to the preconceived notions we had (neither of us thought the other would be interested).

It wasn't until we came back from winter break that we found ourselves in the same apartment during a mutual friend's dinner party. Keven was alone in the corner controlling the music and me being a music lover, appreciated his taste and the songs he was playing. I finally worked up the courage to go sit next to him so that I could "request songs." We started talking and found out that we both had a lot in common. We exchanged numbers as friends (and have been talking every single day since then for the last three years ❤).

About a month after getting to know each other, he asked me to be his girlfriend. Turns out he liked me all along but I had no idea! Since then, we've graduated together, traveled a bunch, and relocated to California to continue our careers as social workers. We have an adorable puppy and will always have CSSW to thank for bringing us together."

"For many years in the late 1960s and 1970s, I ran the examinations at the Law School. This entailed hiring proctors and people to mark the short answer parts of some of the tests. That meant I had to hire graduate students to perform these tasks. One time, I was short on proctors and called up a candidate. I identified myself as the "Examination Supervisor” (the correct title) and nearly put the person who would later become my wife near cardiac arrest. She had just taken a particularly grueling exam and had just returned home. What must she have thought?

Anyway she regained composure and reported the next day to proctor. After the exams were over, I called her and asked her out and the rest is history. A side bar, shortly thereafter, I became Assistant Dean, Director of Admissions at the Law School."

Akira and Alison are native New Yorkers who first crossed paths as lion cubs at Teachers College around 2000, when they were Explorers and Observers at Hollingworth Science Camp, but Akira was scared of girls and Alison was very loud, so they didn't interact very much! They had a second chance when they both went to Delta (Middle School 54) in 2006, but it wasn't until they were both seniors studying computer science at Columbia and took the same Speech Recognition class that they fell in love in Mudd. Now, they've left the Big Apple for the first time to live and work in California, enjoying the sunshine but also missing the greatest city in the world.

"We met over 11 years ago while studying Arabic. Before we got married, we knew we wanted to take our engagement photos at Columbia, the place where it all began. We even took photos in the classroom in Kent Hall where we first met."

"Junior guy at Columbia involved in the Orthodox community of Hillel falling for a first-year Barnard woman active in those same circles - pretty classic, right? How the love evolved, though, was anything but.

April 6, 2016: I decided to skip a Psych Intro class, one of the only classes I skipped in my four year tenure, to invite Ellin to lunch by the patio tables in John Jay, away from the hubbub that is the kosher Hewitt dining scene. After a great lunch, I snuck her an invite to a RHLO a capella event the following night, which, as a RHLO exec member I admittedly demarketed to enable the magic to follow.

April 7, 2016: The room to ourselves, I had sensed the love brewing and became over-confident, asking Ellin if she’d appreciate a heart-to-heart atop Low steps or Mudd roof, the latter I had attempted to trespass earlier in the day, but to no avail. Without blinking an eye, Ellin opined for the latter, and to the illegal roof we went. I was beyond nervous at the prospect of the impossible plan I had just concocted completely falling through, but strangely had an irrational confidence about it as well.

I’ll always thank God for leaving the Mudd roof entry ajar that night. I urge the reader to see for herself whether those doors on the thirteenth or fifteenth floor of Mudd are open to this day - even a lock pick will get you nowhere. After we had confessed that we had liked each other, we climbed all the way to the top of the roof only to hear the most unromantic jarring words one can imagine: 'Get the #$@! down from there!' It was a man who went by the alias [email protected], along with his henchmen, two underclassmen at Columbia. We froze out of sheer fear. They were there to report us at the very least, so we thought. The MIT refugee and his interns ran up to us and began laughing hysterically. The man, whose name was later revealed as Eugene, confided in us that he was the founder and leader of Columbia's Secret Tunneling and Roofing Society.

The next two hours of Ellin and my first date came straight out of a script from the perfect rom com movie. The secret roofers gave Ellin and me a crash course on picking locks with credit cards and tools, our names were etched in a secret wall in Mudd leading to the top of the roof that I still haven’t been able to relocate, and the Columbia campus powers that be had made it crystal clear that Ellin and I were to become lovers for many a Valentine Day and Adar in the future."