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“The Kissing Circle” located on College Green brings about the legend that if you kiss someone on the spot, you’ll stay together forever.
After The Post reached out on social media to hear about Bobcat love stories, more than 100 alumni commented wanting to share their stories. The Post created an online survey for people to write down their own accounts of love found on the bricks.
Click on a brick to read more about that couple.
Adam and I met during Parents Weekend our freshmen year of college (fall 2000) at a party. We dated through all four years of college (though we had three minor breakups, all lasting a total of about two weeks). We even lived down the hall from each other sophomore year in Gamertsfelder! When we graduated, we moved down to Florida where I'd gotten a teaching job. We went back up to Athens in September 2006 to get married at Galbreath Chapel (reception at the OU Inn and post-reception Burrito Buggy, of course). We now have two Bobkittens of our own- Madalyn (OU class of 2028) and Emerson (OU class of 2030) and plan on taking them back up to Athens for their first Homecoming experience as soon as we can!
Aubrey and I began dating in high school but I followed her to OU when she received a great scholarship offer. We lived in the same dorm freshman year and continued to date throughout our time at OU. During our senior year, I decided it was the love of my life and fellow bobcat, Aubrey, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with so I proposed. We got married this past Aug. 7. Members of our bridal party were fellow Bobcats that we met at OU and countless in attendance (maybe 40?) We're also fellow Bobcats that we met during our four years in Athens.
It was our sophomore year (2005) and we first met in the basement of his fraternity house (Phi Kappa Tau). He was playing beer pong and dancing around, I saw him and was immediately drawn to his silliness and crazy personality! Because my sorority house was across the street, we found ourselves running into each other a lot and realized we had many mutual friends! We dated all throughout the next 4 years of college. When it was time to graduate, we both moved back to our hometowns: me to Columbus, Alex to Cincinnati. It took 4 more years of debate as to who would move to which city (and thousands of miles driving back and forth), when Alex popped the question. He finally caved and decided he would move to Columbus. In 2013, we were married and the day after our honeymoon, we packed up Alex's things and moved him to Columbus. For the last three years, we have lived in German Village with our two wonderful goldendoodles! We get back to Athens as much as we can, and miss it every day!
We met during the fall of my freshman year in 1998 (Justin was a new sophomore transfer) in The Convo where we both lived. I had vowed that I didn't want a boyfriend but that just wasn't the way things were meant to be I guess! We started dating over Christmas break 1998 and the rest is history. We were married in May 2003 and have two amazing children, Maura, 5 years old and John Thomas 18 months old. Our advice: Just have fun and enjoy time together!
Met my Bobcat husband Brian Jan. 19, 1995 when visiting my high school best friend Karen (Boltz) Gorretta ('99) at OU in her new Convo home. Brian's friend Angie (Mitro) Woodward ('98) was my BFs new roommate. It was a Friday night at The Convo, so of course there was a party going on! We spent a lot of time exchanging glances, but nothing else. In the Fall of 95, I finally transferred to OU after two long years and community college. My husband strolled into my first official class at OU. 8 a.m. Poli-Sci. He asked me to be his girlfriend in Wray Hall (gone now!) on Feb. 13, 1996. Fate took over and in the next three years we gathered around us some of our closest, lifetime friends. We would spend hours lounging at Strouds Run, eating Bagel Street (Tom's Turkey for me!) Mill Street seemed to be ours alone even though I lived with all of my DZ sisters & he in a crowded house on Mill at the end of Palmer. (No Mill Fest back then, Palmer Fest was it!) We had season tickets to OU theater productions and that began the long-standing tradition for our date nights. We graduated in 1998, but we've never left Athens completely. We were married in 2000 surrounded by our fellow OU alumni. (Karen as my Matron of Honor & Angie a bridesmaid) Our love for our time at Ohio U has only grown with time. Our OU crew of friends reunite every Memorial Day weekend for a big bash!
Our advice: My advice to other Bobcat couples would be to make sure that you are developing as individuals. Enjoy your time together, make friends, but more importantly make memories! Even with the popular "Super Senior Victory Lap," five years is just not enough time in Athens.
My high school boyfriend went away to school at OU in 1968. Having a great after school job as a long distance operator for Ma Bell, before he decided to leave Columbus, I had no intention of going to college. His departure inspired me to be college bound. Few girls from my high school attended college. My mother thought I should stay at Ma Bell because it was a good job. But I went to OU … where a few months later my boyfriend dumped me saying these immortal words, "I need to sow my wild oats." But there I was in Athens, so I studied hard, College of Communication, and dated around. Then he came crawling back, at least that is how I like to term it, and we married my senior year, in a blizzard. We have been married 43 years, with a 37-year-old son, and a 19-month-old grandson. On Saturday mornings we like to have oatmeal. That is about as wild as our oats get these days.
Advice: Eat oatmeal.
We met during Chris' first month at OU. He pledged a fraternity and we both attended the first-ever social between his frat (Phi Kappa Psi) and my sorority (Delta Zeta). I saw him from across the room and told a friend I thought he was cute. She told him and he came over to introduce himself. We spent the evening together, exchanged phone numbers and made plans to see each other again. Over the following weeks and months, Chris became my best friend. I had recently gotten my heart broken so I wasn't ready to start a relationship, but we spent time together almost every day. Our friendship and romance continued over my last two years at OU (and his first two). When I graduated, I moved to Illinois to take a job in television and we decided to make it work long distance. It wasn't easy, but we continued our relationship until he graduated, and then he moved to Illinois to be with me. We got engaged, I got a new job and we moved to Pittsburgh together. (Only two hours away from our families in Northeast Ohio!) We've since married, adopted our first dog and started traveling the world together ... the start of a lifetime of laughter and love, made possibly by our time at Ohio University.
Advice: Relationships can feel effortless when you live within walking distance of one another, have the same friends, go to the same parties and see each other every day. But real life can throw a wrench in even the best laid plans. My advice: don't give up. I remember living 3 states away from my now-husband wondering if we'd EVER live in the same community again. Wondering how we could make it work with each other while trying to achieve our individual goals. I felt a lot of uncertainty in our first years post-college, but I know we're together today because of our mutual desire to make it work. That desire built the foundation of a relationship that has since survived living states apart, moving, new jobs, loss of a parent and so many other trials that often tear other couples apart. No matter who you're with, there's at least one constant in every relationship: the work it takes to keep it together. Sometimes it feels easy, but other times it feels completely overwhelming. The couples who stay together through thick and thin are those who don't give up.
Joy moved into Hoover, the honors dorm then, in my sophomore year. I pretty much had an immediate crush on her. But she met someone else, and I missed my chance. I moved out of the dorms, and we saw each other less and less. I worked at The Post and remember volunteering to cover the dance beat. Now, I knew nothing about dance. But since Joy was a dance minor, it would give me an excuse to see her more at performances. And I noticed that when our band played at parties or Uptown, she would always be in the front row. By the start of my senior year, it was obvious that we both felt the same way about each other. We spent our last year at OU in love, and we've been together ever since.
Advice: So much of college is about finding out who you are. When you meet someone in college, you get to go on that journey together. So many of our friends who met at OU then are still together almost 25 years later. My advice would be to remain open to those experiences and where they can take you in life and as partners.
Joe was starting his second year while Lauren just started her freshman year. We met at a party on Palmer Street, where we "made out" that night. We exchanged numbers, and a few weeks later we ended up coincidentally meeting up at another party, where we had another good make out session. In a drunken stupor, Joe asked Lauren out on a "real" date. The next Friday night, Joe took Lauren to Damon’s (on State Street) after dinner we had about two hours before the start of the movie Meet the Parents in Nelsonville, so we ended up at Strouds Run where we sat on the lake talking until it was time to go.We have been together since that night of Oct. 19, 2000, we finally tied the knot July 1, 2006. We now live in Cincinnati and have two bobkittens: Charlotte (6), class of 2033 and Adeline 2036 (3).
Advice: Be sure to maintain your own friends go out with them without your significant other occasionally, but set up a time and place to meet back up, be forgiving when the other messes up. College can be a wild and crazy time and to make it as a couple you have to be able to forgive and forget.
It was 1969, I was living in Hayes Hall ... the first co-ed university housing! I kept on running into a certain cute guy, and then on Valentine's Day, on my way back from Rumac center cafeteria with my roommate, he asked me out for our first date: movie at Mem. Aud., a beer at a bar, then coffee at Jake's and then just walking/talking up and down Court Street and around campus. We were pretty inseparable after that. Brett was drafted into the army, and I graduated in '70 — without a graduation though — due to the Kent state turmoil. My last memory of leaving campus was seeing tear gas floating down over Jeff Hill. We will be married 47 years in July, and make it a priority to head back to OU once or often twice each year. On a couple of Valentine's Days we've even come back to campus and repeated that "walking around campus" first date of '69. Our daughter also graduated in 2000, as well as many aunts and uncles and my parents before us … many family love stories began at OU!
Advice: Always go back to campus and remember that special magic of Ohio University and Athens!
I started at OU just of of the US Navy, so I was a 22 year-old freshman. Became an RA on West Green in '81-'82. Met Meg, who was the Treudley/Ryors area director. We married at the Athens First Presbyterian Church in June, '83, and I graduated in June, '84. Still married, two kids now out of college. Wouldn't change much of anything.
I was an OU swimmer. I met my husband through another swimmer on the team three weeks into our freshman year (1997). I had just turned 17 the summer before freshman year and he was 18. Just babies! We partied and danced at "The Barn" on Palmer the first night we met (is that place still around!?). He walked me back to my dorm (James) that night. Our conversation on the walk home included a discussion about how we each wanted to have four kids (of course not with each other - just college kids chatting about their dreams), and how both of us had been pedestrians hit by cars on three occasions. What are the chances!?
We dated through college. He went to live in Mansfield to work as a manufacturing engineer while I stayed at OU for grad school in civil engineering and we dated then. After grad school, I moved home to Columbus and started working as a structural engineer ... we still were dating. Finally, he popped the question and we were married in 2004.
We have FOUR little Bobcats now and we live in Upper Arlington, Ohio. When my husband leaves in the morning, he says "Bye Baby Bobcats!" and the four little ones (aged 8, 6, 4 and 3) respond "Bye Daddy Bobcat!"
Advice: The college couple MUST grow, adjust, change in order to make a relationship last beyond. College relationships are simpler and you've got to be ready when life after college makes relationships challenging and complicated. It will never be as easy as it was in college but it will only get better.
We were introduced by mutual friend, Beth Harmon, at a fraternity party. We are both from Pittsburgh and chatted about our hometown. Anthony asked for my number but ultimately didn't call. A month later was our sorority formal and Beth took Anthony, I took another friend and we all shared a room. We had a blast! Still nothing happened. After thinking Anthony liked Beth for 2 months, he finally asked me out. This was April 1990, sophomore year. We were serious very quickly. I fell HARD for this true gentleman who made me laugh and encouraged my success. We also discovered that we had actually met in high school! I had a friend who was involved in a project with Anthony and had introduced us. This is more unusual than it may seem as our high schools were about 40 minutes from each other, even though we are both from Pittsburgh. After OU, we both came back home. Anthony went to law school and I started working. After taking the bar exam, we got engaged and married. We've been married 20 years and have two teenaged boys. We hope at least one goes to OU!
Advice: It's truly wonderful to have the OU connection as you move through life. We have so many two-bobcat-couple friends who share this amazing history. Of course, the campus is a lovely backdrop to budding romance as well :-) We have a watercolor of Galbreath chapel, given as an engagement gift. I think the connection of the chapel to our respective Greek organizations makes it extra special (Mr. G was a Delt and Mrs. G was a Pi Phi). I'd encourage Bobcat couples to reconnect to the campus when you can and the friends who supported you at the start. It's incredible to go there years later and know that it is where your family began.
Jon is from Omaha, Nebraska. He came to OU to play football for Solich. I am from Pittsburgh, PA. I came to OU to major in journalism (clearly that went well …) We met our sophomore year (19 years old!) in the Sargent Hall on West Green. He lived on the first floor and I was the girl's RA on the 2nd floor. Scandalous, I know! haha. We didn't like each other at first but became fast friends and by Thanksgiving that year, were officially dating. We got engaged in November 2013 on the last home game of football season, called Senior Night. We all lined up on the field and when Jon walked out he got down on one and proposed right on the field! We have never left Athens and got married at the OU Inn (where I am the wedding planner) in April 2016. We are die hard Bobcat fans and go to every game we can! Athens and OU holds a very special place in our young lives. We both grew as independent people and as a couple.
Advice: Even if you think someone might not be your type, give them a shot! You never know! True love comes when you are least expecting it!
We met in September, starting dating in October of freshman year. We were married in august after graduation. We were engaged on my 21st birthday.
We actually met and became friends while I was dating Zach's roommate... not necessarily the storybook union, but after that relationship ended the friendship grew and eventually we started dating in 2004. I was his fraternity's sweetheart and he was my sorority's sweetheart while at school. He graduated a year before me and we did the long distance thing while he went to law school in Columbus. Upon graduating, I moved to Columbus, a year later we were married and now 13 years later we have two beautiful future bobcats to wrangle. Zach intended to go to a different college initially and I almost moved back home at one point to help with a family crisis, but the allure of OU called us home and I am so glad it did!
Advice: Remember that life at OU is kind of a fairytale, as are the relationships while you are there. There are plenty of twists and turns and highs and lows but at the end of the day, there is a real world you will graduate into eventually and you're going to want a best friend by your side.
Ed and I met in an English class taught by Father Cronin in the winter of 1970. We've been married 45 years as of this past August 14th. The university had just changed from the semester system to the quarter system, and I needed just one more hour of English for graduation. Ed was the leader of my discussion group within Father Cronin’s class, which met after he gave a 45-minute lecture. Five senior English students were chosen to lead the five groups under Cronin in a class on psychology in literature, and for that, they received an automatic A in this independent study class. We met on Jan. 8th, and were engaged by May 8th at my Phi Mu formal, and President Claude Sowle closed the university the following Thursday in the middle of the night, following the riots of Kent State the weekend before. Ed never had a formal graduation in 1970, as we had to leave campus by noon the next day. Your grades were what they were as they stood on that day. They were chaotic times! I was to leave for a summer in Europe, and he was in line to be drafted. I never knew when I flew to Europe if I’d ever see him again.
Advice: Make sure you take your kids back and show them all your special spots of when you met and fell in love!
We originally met as freshman. I was walking with one of my friends and Sean had a crush on her. He was with one of his friends who happened to be my lab partner. They called us over and introduced themselves. Long story short, we became very good friends over the next three years. We lived in the same dorms, had the same group of friends and even dated each other's friends. After a while, we both realized that we were attracted to each other. We started dating before our senior year and have now been married for 10 years.
Advice: Remember that OU is sort of a "bubble" world. You are sheltered from the real world- real world problems, real world work, etc. Once you leave OU, you will grow and change in many ways. If you truly love each other, you will grow and change together but will find each other on the other side.
Meet Teresa on a Twister board at a East State house party in 1982. We married in 1985, still married had three children who all are OU Bobcat alums as well.
Advice: Remember OU always as the place you met and reflect on those times when current times seem tough.
Jesse and Brooke were together a year before they both found themselves at Ohio University in 2003. They dated throughout their time at OU and were inseparable everything from meeting up at Alden to a coffee date at Donkey. Small town kids, Brooke from Washington County and Jesse from Athens County decided to move after graduation in 2007 to the Northern Kentucky area. In 2010, they decided to go back to Athens to get married during Ohio Brew Week in July. They wed at the Richland Avenue United Methodist Church and had their reception at the Baker University Center Ballroom. They even had an after party at their favorite bar: The Pub. Each year, they go back to Athens for Ohio Brew Week to celebrate their wedding anniversary. They take a picture each year sitting in the same booth at The Pub too!
Advice: Enjoy your time - it flies by way TOO fast.
Advice: From our experience it's about being genuine. You have to be confident in yourself before you can be confident enough to put your love into another. You have to be ready to accept the good, the bad, and even some of the ugly. Relationships are hard, and that's what no one told us. You have to fight like hell to make sure you're still with that person three years later, and you have to learn to grow together. If you don't like something, don't hold it back and smile - tell them. Be honest, and be you.
Mine is more of a story of a romance that did not quite blossom on campus but was finalized and made official on Court Street when we were married in the Courthouse. My then girlfriend Jacqueline was a nanny on a J1 student visa and I was preparing to start graduate school at OU in sports administration. This also included starting a new life for me after a decade plus in the Army. While I had been to Athens before Jacqueline had not. Our love started in Bavaria when I was a US Army soldier there from 1990-94. Jacqueline worked on base at the barber and beauty salon. I rarely would speak to the German girls in the barber shop because all of the soldiers did and I figured it would be just noise. However something made me talk to her, most notably that her name is the same as my mothers. Something clicked that day in 1991 and we have been together ever since. While exclusive for my remaining Army days, the day of reckoning was coming as to the status of the relationship since I was shipping home and going to graduate school. I was in love but worried about getting married without being established with a job, income, house etc. I am not from Ohio and everything would be new plus I would be busy as a grad student and as a GA with the wrestling team. We decided that we would get her to America as a nanny with aupair international and she secured a position in Augusta, Georgia. She could stay there while I finished school. I even lived in Georgia for a few months awaiting the start of the 1994 academic year and my new life.
When it was time to leave for Athens it became harder and harder to be apart and it was decided she would leave her nanny position early and join me in Athens. We moved into the Mill Street apartments (then university married and family housing) and simultaneously were notified that she was no longer eligible to stay in the USA since she stopped her nanny job. Essentially she was facing deportation. I was impressed INS had a handle on all of the illegal nannies but seemed to have a problem with admitting dangerous people (couldn't resist a little immigration joke). At any rate we were stuck, she had to go back to Germany and the only way she could stay was for us to get married. Not that I did not want to. We were engaged but I had this plan of being established first. Love waits for no one and you just have to do what you have to do — and of course wanted to.
We were married June 9, 1994 in the Athens County courthouse by Judge Edward Robe. I remember the clerk telling us that Athens was known as the Vegas of Appalachia because the wedding could be done very quick and did not require a blood test (yes this was once required so that family members would not marry). The day, while informal was so wonderful. We actually took wedding pictures at KMart (where Dunhams sports is located now and the pictures were wonderful and still used as our main wedding photos) and we even had an after wedding muffin and coffee at the old My favorite Muffin shop (Where Fed Ex was and now location of Brookfield Church) that was given to us for free after we told the clerk we were just married. We had a wedding dinner at Albert's restaurant (the site of BW3s now) and despite it being a civil ceremony, in a new place and without friends and family it was a wonderful day and the people of Athens treated us as family. Being married here to make our love and romance official has always been one of our favorite stories to tell. When I tell people I was married on Court Street they always love to hear that. I once told Matt Lauer a quick version of the story and he loved it. It is a great story to share with Bobcats around the world and I have done that numerous times. It is the wedding day we celebrate as our anniversary and is a great icebreaker!
While we did have a formal wedding in Germany two years later with all the pomp and circumstance with family, our wedding day in Athens will always be special to us and in many ways our "official" wedding despite having a formal ceremony also. Getting married in Athens also started a love affair with this town and the campus, so much so that I was able to be hired as a professor in the Sport Administration department in 2006 after working many years in college sports. One of our goals was to return to Athens and raise our family and we were able to do that. We have been back 10 years now and this is home. It is wonderful living in a place you love and where you have a very unique wedding love story that can relate to all Bobcats. We are Bobcats for Life and now our daughter Chiara is a freshman here at OU. Maybe she will fall in love and even get married here too — but I think we will do that in a church although the courthouse on Court Street will always be a special memory!
Advice: If your significant other is the one, go for it and never look back. The connection to OU will always be something you share. Good Luck!!
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This story is part of a series of specially designed stories that represents some of the best journalism The Post has to offer. Check out the rest of the special projects here.