Bernadette, then a sophomore at Fordham’s undergraduate college for women, was selling tickets for the event when John told her he could get her a date if she needed one.

“I asked her to describe the ideal date,” he recalled. “This went on for about a week, and she finally decided to ask me [to the formal]. Being the nutty guy that I am, I didn’t say yes right away.” Instead, he penned an acceptance note and delivered it to her at Duane Library one afternoon. “We both laughed later that day, and the date was set.”

At the formal, the couple—he in a tuxedo and she in a flowing pink gown—danced the night away, enjoying the evening with a close group of friends they met in their first year at Fordham.

Ever since that starry winter night, the couple has been together. “We talked every night at 9:15. That was our thing,” John said. “I am glad she didn’t find the ‘ideal guy,’ but found me instead.”

This spring, the Mulhearns are looking forward to their 50th Fordham Jubilee, and next summer, they celebrate another golden milestone, their 50th wedding anniversary.

Back in college, they might have seemed an unlikely couple at first. Bernadette, an English major, lived with her parents in Yonkers and commuted to school every day in a car her parents gave her. “It was a candy apple red Mustang,” she said. “That made it worth the trip!”

John, who studied economics, lived in off-campus housing, then in campus dorms in his junior and senior years. He was born in Jersey City and his family, which includes two brothers and two sisters, moved several times throughout his childhood—they lived in Minnesota, Iowa, upstate New York, and then Bronxville.

But as they got to know one another, Bernadette and John discovered they had much in common. They enjoyed attending weekend football games, sitting on the sidelines at Fordham basketball games—especially during the 1970–1971 season, when coach Digger Phelps led the Rams to a 26-3 record—and socializing with their friends every Friday night at the Ramskeller.

Bernadette reflects on her years at Fordham’s Thomas More College fondly. She was involved in student government, serving first as class president and later as president of the student body. She also sang in the Women’s Chorale.

“I had a lot of interaction with Dean Barbara Wells, and they let us [women students] help them develop the curriculum for the humanities program,” Bernadette said. “At first, I was shocked that they would let us have so much input. I felt very privileged and honored that they took us seriously. I really enjoyed every minute I was there.”

John was also deeply involved in campus life, and even co-founded a fraternal organization with friends.

“We were about 60 strong,” he recalled. “We did a lot of charity work with the Y and other groups on campus. We also played football. It was supposed to be touch football, but it ended up being tackle football. We played neighborhood teams and were even undefeated one year!”

After graduating, John began his career with AT&T in Boston, and Bernadette continued her education at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, where she studied education. But the couple stayed in close touch and, one year after they graduated, they were married at Christ the King Church in Yonkers.

John spent three decades at AT&T, then moved to the telecommunications company, Global Crossing, in 2000, where he served as an executive vice president, global access management, until 2011. He and his brother then launched a consulting firm, New Vistas Management, where he is currently CEO. The company specializes in energy conservation through the improvement of HVAC systems.

Over the years, John’s career took the family to Connecticut, New Jersey, and even Toronto before they returned to New Jersey, where they live today. Their children—Aileen, Christine, and Gregory—all graduated from the College of the Holy Cross and live close by.

Through it all, the Mulhearns have remained connected to Fordham. Longtime supporters of the Fordham Fund, they are members of the Doty Society, which recognizes donors who have given to the University for 20 years or more. And as Jubilee leaders, they are excited to return to campus this year to reminisce with their former classmates at the Golden Rams Dinner & Soiree on Friday, June 3.

They are also active in St. Joseph’s Church in Mendham, where Bernadette is a Eucharistic Minister and lector. John enjoys playing golf in his free time and runs a golf league at the local country club. They enjoy spending time with their family, which includes seven grandchildren, who range in age from a fourth grader to a first-year student at Holy Cross.

“We’re less than 15 minutes away from each other,” Bernadette said. “You couldn’t plan that if you tried. The beauty of having [grandchildren] so close is that we’ve been a part of their lives as they’re growing up. We are the luckiest people in the world.”

After virtual gatherings in 2020 and 2021, Jubilee 2022 will be held in person on the Rose Hill campus from June 3 to 5. The alumni relations office anticipates welcoming its largest group of Jubilarians ever. Learn more and register today.

Bly, who chairs the Department of English, began to make the transition to her own voice with her last book, Paris in Love (Random House, 2013). The book was still published under her pen name, though it was a thinly veiled account of Bly’s own year-long journey with her family to the City of Light.

Lizzie & Dante is set on the island of Elba off the coast of Italy. It’s a vacation spot that Bly refers to as the “scruffy little island where Napoleon was exiled.” It’s also a getaway that she and her Italian husband have been visiting for years.

“It’s not like Capri, it’s not a fancy island. It’s not where the yachts go. It’s where Italians go and bring their children,” said Bly.

The island’s laid-back vibe stands in stark contrast to the Midwest where Bly was brought up by her “workaholic parents,” the poet Robert Bly and author Carol Bly. Carol Bly succumbed to ovarian cancer in 2007, a disease that Lizzie, the novel’s main character, copes with when she chooses to travel to the island rather than sustain more painful treatments.

“My heroine is making a decision about whether to go into further treatment. I think every cancer patient facing a rigorous treatment plan makes that decision, consciously or unconsciously,” said Bly, who is a cancer survivor herself. “She goes to the island with her closest friends, who became her found family.”

Lizzie arrives on the island with her oldest friend and his lover. Through them, Bly attempts to tease out questions of chosen families and the very nature of love itself.

“How we love is not necessarily determined by who we want to have sex with,” said Bly. “This book is a much wider notion of love than what I’m able to do within the bounds of 400 pages of historical romance.”

To that end, Lizzie meets and falls for an Italian chef and his 11-year-old daughter, who unwittingly further extends her notion of a found family.

“It’s my first novel and it is set in the present, so I wanted it to be something that I knew incredibly well,” said Bly. “I know Elba and I know Italian food. And while I don’t know Italian chefs, I know Italian men.”

The novel took Bly four years to write. She said she knows the ins and outs of historical romance but writing for the current moment proved a rather difficult task. Paris in Love was a contemporary memoir, but the cast of characters was primarily limited to her immediate family. For Lizzie and Dante, she wanted the story to be accessible and inclusive, which meant creating contemporary characters who Lizzie may befriend, but whose background differs from Bly’s own. To that end, Bly noted that the book went through sensitivity readings to ensure gay and Black characters read as authentic. It’s a role that Bly said didn’t exist when she taught a publishing course at Fordham, but one she said she’s thankful for now.

“That role came about over the last several years, for white authors in particular who were thinking, ‘I need to make sure this works from another person’s point of view,’” she said.

Indeed, much of what she’s learned over the course of relaunching her career as Mary Bly could become an outline for a new publishing course. She noted that though her last book was in essence a memoir, switching to her own name required negotiations with her publisher to come out as herself.

“Obviously, they would rather it was published as Eloisa James, but I felt that this is not a romance. This is a love story, and it has much more of the dark side of life in it because Lizzie is fighting cancer,” said Bly.

In addition, Lizzie’s love of poetry and music, to say nothing of her role as a Shakespeare scholar, align far more with author Mary Bly’s personality than that of bodice ripper novels by Eloisa James. Lizzie sings from the same Episcopalian hymn books that Bly grew up with. Lizzie reads poetry by poets who were friends of Bly’s parents. And she’s a Shakespeare professor at Fordham.

“I know that a lot of my readers automatically buy an Eloisa James book, and it did not seem fair to them to be giving them something that was considerably more challenging. And as it says on the cover, it’s a novel, not a romance,” said Bly. “Also, I thought it was a Mary Bly book. I’m the Shakespeare professor, right?”

Bly will be signing copies of the Lizzie and Dante at Homecoming on Oct. 9 in the main tent as part of the newly-launched Fordham Alumni Book Club.  

“I filled it out with the silliest of answers and sent it back,” Sanchez writes. The date went so well that they decided to keep seeing each other despite Sanchez’s move to Los Angeles the following month. Martinez proposed in February 2015, a few weeks before Sanchez returned to New York City. They welcomed a daughter in February 2017 and got married on August 16, 2019.

Ram Sweethearts

Last February, Sanchez and Martinez were among more than 70 Fordham alumni couples—from the 1960s to the Class of 2019—who responded to a call from the alumni relations office to share their love stories on social media. From tales of blind dates and dating apps to lunch tables and libraries, these couples have at least one thing in common—they’re grateful that Fordham brought them together. See their photos and read their stories here. And send your own Fordham love story to us at [email protected].

Some couples hit it off immediately—more than a few noted that they met their loved one on their very first day on campus. Others crossed paths as seniors, or were good friends for many years before getting together. Some only recently started dating; some are newlyweds; and others will soon be celebrating 25 or even 50 years of marriage, or are now the proud parents of Fordham students or alumni. Many of them were engaged on campus or married in the University Church.

From stories of blind dates and dating apps to lunch tables and libraries, these Fordham couples share at least one thing in common—they’re grateful that Fordham brought them together.

See the full Valentine’s Day album on the Fordham University Alumni Facebook page, which includes every submission we received.

Note: Although we loved reading all the stories alumni couples shared, we wish we had received even more! We hope we can continue to create an inclusive space for our diverse group of fellow Rams as we ask for similar story submissions in the future.

They were married in 2007. Though they never overlapped at Fordham—Trevor graduated in 1999 and Antoinette in 2003—they agree that there was a comfort in being with someone who “shared the same passion and pride for the place we attended college.” In fact, for their second date they chose to see Man on Fire. “The reason,” says Trevor, “is because Denzel Washington [the film’s star]went to Fordham!”

“Trevor was the first person I met who understood the importance of my staying connected to Fordham and my high school volunteer work,” Antoinette says. “People wearing ‘F’ hats and shirts are popular in our lives.”

Fordham Beginnings

The couple first came to Fordham from opposite coasts. An Astoria native, Antoinette says the University has always been a presence in her life. She grew up knowing family members, neighbors, and teachers who are Fordham alumni. But it wasn’t until she toured the Rose Hill campus during her senior year of high school that “I knew I’d found my home,” she says.

“At Fordham, I was not just a number but an actual person,” says Antoinette, who commuted to campus. When her parents would pick her up at the Bathgate Avenue entrance, Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., then president of Fordham, “would come over to say hello and have a conversation,” she recalls. “I don’t think presidents at other schools do that.”

Growing up in Novato, California, Trevor didn’t know much about Fordham until he was recruited for the water polo team. Now a managing director at Signature Bank, he says that Fordham “turned out to be a tremendous call” in terms of his experience as a student-athlete, financial aid support, and an education that “set me up for success in the world of finance.”

Giving Back

Together and individually, Antoinette and Trevor have spent a lot of time supporting Fordham causes. They were both longtime active members of the Young Alumni Committee—an advisory and programming board for graduates of the past 10 years—and advised students through the Fordham Mentoring Program. Trevor still supports the water polo team. And together they’ve supported HEOP, the Ailey/Fordham BFA in Dance program, and Founder’s scholarship students; participated on Jubilee reunion class committees; and supported several athletics programs.

A newer family tradition is attending Fordham games on campus as well as regional alumni chapter events around California, on Long Island, and in Westchester with their daughter, 3-year-old Aria. Antoinette is a self-employed accountant who works from home to be with her.

“I know how important it is to help our future leaders of tomorrow, and I love volunteering with people and collaborating to improve,” Antoinette says. 

Shared Roots

Besides being passionate about similar causes, the couple shares a certain Fordham mentality that they say brings strength to their marriage.

“A Jesuit education and the Fordham experience definitely provides us with a core of our relationship. We choose to live and lead by example,” Antoinette says. “Marriage is a mix of individual and teamwork. That’s why I say you should find ‘the partner,’ because ‘the one’ is not realistic. Find someone who supports you, helps you be happy, and is open to you and the inevitable change that happens.”

Trevor agrees. “I think one of our strengths is that we both realize when something is important to the other person, and we support that,” he says.

“Plus, we are both big Star Wars and Marvel fans.” 

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?

Antoinette: I love being a mom to a toddler. I recognize that I’m her role model, even her caped crusader—sometimes I wear a cape! I set an example for her in the only way I was taught—through volunteerism and advocacy work on social justice projects. It’s the change for the greater good. Yes, I’m also an accountant. But I say I do accounting for fun and my real job is volunteering. I like knowing that Aria can look back and see results of what I did to make the world better for her generation.

Trevor: I’m most passionate about my daughter, Aria. The best part of my week is watching her progress in swimming, and now mixed martial arts. She is only 3 and has been promoted into a swim class with 5-year-olds! She has zero fear of the water and can already swim about five yards by herself if I let her go. If I tie a noodle around her, she can swim an entire length in a 25-yard pool.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Antoinette: Jeff Gray, my former work-study boss at Fordham [who is now senior vice president for student affairs], once told me that sometimes when you become overwhelmed by everything happening, you focus on one thing and forget to see how things work and affect each other—the big and little pieces. You need to learn to step back and then look in at the big picture, he said. Only then can you fully see what you are missing.

Trevor: My junior year of high school, my water polo coach told me that a big shot is just a little shot who kept shooting. I know it is a famous quote [by writer Christopher Morley], but that was the first time I had ever heard it. Playing sports teaches you a lot of things, but for me the most important is to never be scared to shoot your shot.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
Antoinette: In New York, it’s Rockefeller Center and the tree. I’m probably biased since it’s where my first full-time role was after graduating from Fordham. It’s also where my husband picked me up for our first lunch date. It’s a place that everyone in the world is drawn to visit. Now we take our daughter to visit the tree annually. It’s a nod to how places that are so chaotic or crowded can still be symbols of faith in the holidays, togetherness, and our own true wish that something better will come in the next year.

My favorite spot in the world is walking the beach and watching the sunset in Waikiki. They have fireworks on Friday nights at the Hilton Hawaiian, and I think it’s gorgeous to sit in the sand and watch the waves hitting the beach while the cool air gently blows. Trevor’s grandparents lived there for more than 30 years, and we would go every summer when we first got married. Hopefully we’ll return this fall for the Fordham football game.

Trevor: My favorite places in New York are Astoria and Fordham. Both places just kill it from a restaurant standpoint. I would say that Bahari Estiatorio in Astoria is hands down the best Greek restaurant on the planet, and Omonia is the best bakery in New York City; its baklava cheesecake is ridiculous. Fordham obviously always means a lot to me. I love the campus; it just always seems warm and inviting. Being a water polo player, the uniqueness of having a 38-meter pool is now something I smile about as well. Most pools are either 25-yard short-courses or 50-meter long-courses. NCAA Division I and international water polo are played at 30 meters, so Fordham’s unique pool still works.

Like Antoinette, my favorite spot outside of New York is Hawaii, specifically Waikiki. My Oma and Opa lived there for basically my entire childhood and through my early adult years. Perfection is sitting with a Mai Tai in the beautiful Hawaiian sun!

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Antoinette: Gone with the Wind shows how you can go from rich to poor, poor to rich, but still have faith and a fire within to excel. Life is full of trials and tribulations. It’s not life if you can’t take the ups and downs. It takes perseverance to stay focused and overcome in order to build or rebuild. You always need to be able to self-reflect and be grateful for who and what you have in your life. Sadly, Scarlett was not able to find balance between work and life. She was always focused on someone else, but he was not worth all of the effort she spent trying to win his love. Scarlett had everything and lost the one who loved her the most. But with conviction, she concludes that she will get him back.

Trevor: I read a lot of books, but this is a tough question. It’s not my favorite, but the book I read as a kid and read again recently that probably stuck with me the most is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I think as you rise up the ladder, it’s important to keep the lessons that Dickens tried to impart in the back of your head.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Antoinette: Joseph Cammarosano, longtime professor of economics. He taught us that “it’s not about making a living, but making a life worth living.” He helped New York state create the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) for academically and economically disadvantaged students, an invaluable program to those who qualify. I credit much of my passion for volunteerism, philanthropic efforts, and even political focus, especially in education, to Dr. C’s teaching. I don’t think you can get more Jesuit than him inspiring others to follow the core principle of men and women for and with others. I also love and admire Donna Rapaccioli [now dean of the Gabelli School], not just as my former accounting professor but for the exemplary woman she is ethically and for all of the amazing relationships and advancements she has created and continues to grow (work in progress). I hope to see more women in business, especially finance!

Trevor: Another tough question. My favorite professor at Fordham was a history professor named Robert Jones. While my concentration was finance, I have always loved history. I think I took all of my electives in classes that he taught.

“It was a chance to get away, a different environment,” he said. “I was working five days a week, 12 to 13 hours a day. When it was time for me to go to school, I was ready to go. It was awesome.”

Besides taking technology courses to buttress his career as a computer programmer, there were other benefits of attending Marymount. It was there that he met Michele Holmes Chavers, MC ’99.

“I decided to stay in the dorms that fall, and who stepped off the elevator in the science building but my future husband,” recalled Holmes Chavers. “And that’s how we met. We had classes together at different times, grabbed a slice of pizza, a cup of coffee, and it went on from there.”

By 1985, Chavers’ career hit high gear and he was off to other cities. When he returned to Marymount, its transition to becoming a part of Fordham had already begun, so he transferred his Marymount credits to Fordham and took classes at the Westchester campus on the weekends through the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS). He would go on to take classes with PCS at Rose Hill and finally at Lincoln Center—making him one of the very few to take classes at all four campuses.

“I really got a charge out of it. I was the first male student that helped create the ambassador program for career services [at Marymount]. I volunteered because I felt so good in my heart about Fordham,” he said, adding that he hopes to become more involved with the alumni community in the future.

“I contribute because they gave me a lot, especially having a program where I could go back to school as an adult. I was a man in my 50s and I got my [college]  degree.”

“I’ve been very lucky in life,” he says, “including who I married.”

The O’Briens met in the mid-1960s at Fordham’s undergraduate business school in Manhattan, then located at 302 Broadway, and each earned a B.S. from the University in June 1968.

This spring, as they prepare to celebrate their Fordham Jubilee, their first as Golden Rams, they have been reflecting not only on their undergraduate days but also on the shared values that brought them together and inspire them to give back to their alma mater.

An Interborough Connection

Annette grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, part of a large extended Italian-American family; Dan was the oldest of seven children in a large Irish-American family based in Manhattan and New Jersey. They both went to Catholic high schools and were encouraged to attend a Catholic college.

At Fordham, they served together on the student council, but they didn’t begin dating until their senior year. A friend of Dan’s was dating one of the few other women in their class and suggested a double date. Dan asked Annette. “It grew from there,” he says.

That December, Dan started a six-week internship that took him away from campus, but he and Annette stayed in touch by letter, a method that may have added a tinge of romance to their blossoming relationship.

“That’s how the seed got planted and maybe kindled the spirit in both of us,” Dan says. By the time he came back to campus, “in the spring, we were steady.”

They found a lot of common ground, especially in the important role family played in their lives. “We just felt we came from the same kind of background and had the same goals and the same ideas,” Annette says of their connection.

In fall 1968, just a few months after graduating from Fordham, they selected an engagement ring together, and Dan proposed on a bench outside of Tavern on the Green, where they had gone for dinner.

Soon after, Dan, on the cusp of being drafted, decided to try to get into the Army Reserve. He was accepted later that year and served for six years, during which time he and Annette were married—at Annette’s family parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Brooklyn, in December 1969.

“We’ve always been on the same page in terms of where things go. We swim in the same direction,” Dan says of their marriage. “Our strengths and weaknesses complement each other. If we get angry, it doesn’t last. It just works, and we are happy about it.”

Reconnecting with Their Roots, Supporting Students

Over the years, their shared focus on family has been a key to their joy. The O’Briens have four daughters, and the couple hosts an annual Christmas Eve dinner that includes more than 50 family members in their Ridgefield, Connecticut, home.

They also have been running together for about 35 years, and typically compete in three or four half-marathons every year across the country, including ones in Georgia, Florida, and California.

The O’Briens admit that it took them 40 years before they re-engaged with their alma mater—at a time in their lives, Dan says, “when making connections to the past feels important.”

About 10 years ago, after meeting Fordham’s president, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., the couple established an endowed scholarship to help future generations of Fordham students.

“I always felt that I should give back to the school,” Annette says. “I liked being there, and I got a good education. I feel happy about giving back and helping kids, too.”

Like Annette, Dan says he’s “very happy to be reconnected.” In addition to providing scholarship support, he serves on the President’s Council, through which he mentors students and discusses his role as an adviser at J.H. Whitney & Co. in New Canaan, Connecticut.

“There is a great Fordham family throughout the country, and by reconnecting, you feel part of that again,” he says. “They extended their hand to me, and I’m happy to be back.”

—Maja Tarateta

Dolan confesses to being “not athletic at all,” but she’s always been a fan of the game and is a self-described stats and sabermetrics geek. She grew up in Chicago going to White Sox games and watching her brothers play. Baseball is also all over her Twitter feed, where she reveals herself to be a droll and thoughtful observer of sports, politics, and culture.

A Multireligious Upbringing

Dolan was also powerfully influenced by religion. Her family alternated between attending Catholic Mass and a Unitarian church, where her mother was the religious education director. And one of her grandmothers is an ordained Episcopal minister.

“I remember my mom giving sermons at Unity Temple as a kid, and then, when we went to St. Pat’s, it was difficult to see that only men could do that,” Dolan said recently over coffee at a café near Nationals Park and the Washington, D.C., home she shares with her husband and two dogs. “You almost get vertigo watching it.”

Fueled by a desire to understand why women don’t have an equal role in the church, Dolan pursued theology and religious studies in college, spending three years at L’Institut Catholique de Paris (her father was working in Amsterdam at the time, and she already spoke French) before graduating from the University of San Diego.

A Shared Sense of Humor

In 2015, Dolan took a job covering the Oakland A’s for Comcast SportsNet. A multitasker, she also worked as a speech writer (which she does full time now) and tried her hand at comedy writing.

A friendship with pitcher Brandon McCarthy, then a starter for the A’s and a fledgling comedy writer himself, led to an introduction that changed Dolan’s life. McCarthy thought she and his teammate Doolittle might hit it off. Five years and one Star Wars-themed marriage proposal later, the pair made it official on October 2.

We had the afternoon off so we eloped and we’ve never been happier pic.twitter.com/NrVB7Klf3R

— Eireann Dolan (@EireannDolan) October 3, 2017

That capped a busy stretch for the couple. Doolittle was traded from the A’s to the Nats in mid-July, reporting to the team about 12 hours later.

“It was an adventure, and you learn what you’re capable of,” Dolan said, laughing. She admitted guiltily to asking for one academic extension, directing her professor to her Twitter feed if he didn’t believe the reason.

A Passion for Social Causes

About that Twitter account. Dolan and Doolittle have a teasing, playful relationship online, with Dolan recording a video tossing out all of Doolittle’s stuff (including his Love Actually DVD) after he lost the “Face of MLB” contest to Buster Posey, or posting his awkward high school photos.

But they also use the platform to promote causes they believe in, including LGBTQ rights, aid to Syrian refugees, support for military veterans, and mental health issues. Those values drew the pair together, according to Doolittle.

“I would say that our general mission in life is firmly rooted in the Beatitudes and the imperative of Matthew 25:40,” he said of his and his wife’s commitment to social justice. “We are called to have an option for the marginalized, the oppressed, the ‘least among us.’”

In that vein, Dolan hopes ultimately to engage in one-on-one prison ministry with inmates and parolees.

She applied to Fordham’s online master’s degree program in pastoral studies late last year and started taking courses last spring, calling the program “very portable with my life.” She’s planning to increase her course load from one to two courses per session next year, and she’ll take an intensive on-campus session next summer.

In the meantime, she’s also planning a wedding.

“My big, Irish-Catholic family felt left out,” Dolan said of their elopement. So there will be a January ceremony in Chicago. She added, with a wink, that she’s counting on the cold weather to keep the guest list down. “It’s Darwinism as a wedding!”

—Julie Bourbon

“We bonded over a love of science,” Rog says of the night they met at a gathering of fellow resident assistants. “There was a magnetic force between us after that first chat, and we never left each other’s side.”

They spent hours together that fall, setting up bulletin boards in Martyrs’ Court and Walsh Hall, walking the campus between classes, and stopping for marathon chat sessions, including one in front of Collins Hall that lasted nearly eight hours.

“Had we not been RAs, we would not have crossed paths,” Rog says. “We learned that we have different interests and strengths, but we use those to be a strong team.”

The couple also developed a lasting bond with a Fordham Jesuit—Joseph A. Currie, S.J., JES ’61, GSAS ’63—who, Rog says, gave them “meaningful trainings on social justice.”

Father Currie, who died last March at the age of 80, was Fordham’s associate vice president for mission and ministry at the time. Lucas got to know him when the two lived in Tierney Hall, where Lucas was an RA, and Rog was impressed by Father Currie’s patience and understanding when she came to him with questions about her faith. “We both love this man,” she says they soon realized.

Like their love for each other, their friendship with Father Currie would continue beyond graduation and influence their lives in many ways.

Lucas graduated in 2008 with a degree in finance and began working in New York City. The following year, after Rog completed her degree in psychology, the two moved to Queens, where she enrolled in a doctoral program in psychology at St. John’s University. But each year, as summer drew to a close, they returned to Rose Hill for a romantic picnic on Eddies Parade.

Lucas proposed to Rog in Central Park on All Saints’ Day, 2010. In homage to the back-to-school season in which they met, the two were married on August 27, 2011, with Father Currie presiding at a ceremony in Buffalo, where Rog grew up.

“Father Currie continued to be a close friend and mentor to both of us,” Rog says, noting that every summer he would host her and Lucas at the Jesuit retreat house in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. “We were grateful to have gotten even more time with him when he moved to Philly shortly after we did.”

Rog, who earned her doctorate in 2014, is now a pediatric psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she specializes in treating children with pain disorders, and Lucas is a financial services technologist at TD Bank. The couple also makes time for service work. “We want to focus on the life Fordham and its culture inspired,” says Lucas, who is a regular volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in Philadelphia and recently traveled to China to work on a homebuilding project.

This past summer, he and Rog trekked to Zambia to help residents in a rural village establish a small school for children in what Rog described as a “repurposed chicken coop.”

“We hope to return one day and continue to provide educational and psychosocial services, along with some infrastructure improvements,” she says.

Closer to home, Rog and Lucas are house parents at the Milton Hershey School, a private, cost-free boarding school in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that serves more than 2,000 children who meet criteria in financial need and potential to learn. Rog and Lucas spend every other weekend living with a group of middle-school girls on the campus.

It’s a familiar role for the couple who met as Fordham RAs. They find themselves using techniques they learned on campus, like suggesting “ice breakers” to get the girls talking and more engaged with each other.

“We offer a lot to these kids, being an adult guiding force in their lives,” Rog says. “But we are also learning so much from them.”

—Maja Tarateta

In 1963, Joyce Onorato was a sophomore history major at Marymount College, when she agreed to join one of her suitemates on a double date. She met Brian Abamont, a science major at St. John’s University. Weeks later, he invited Joyce to a movie. She recalls thinking he was not her type, but she went anyway and had a strange flash that she would marry him.

“I thought, what? I don’t even like this guy!” she says.

They didn’t see each other again until the first night of summer classes at 302 Broadway, Fordham’s Manhattan home for undergraduates at the time. Joyce had enrolled in an economics course there, and Brian had transferred to Fordham from St. John’s to major in education. He walked out of an elevator one evening and bumped into Joyce. They began dating, and soon she was wearing his Fordham pin.

“I would ask her every night if she wanted a ride home from class,” says Brian, who, like Joyce, grew up in Queens. “I kept asking, and she said no. One night, she said yes. I took her home that night—and every night since!”

In 1966, Joyce graduated from Marymount and began taking summer classes at NYU for a master’s degree in European history while Brian completed his education degree at Fordham.

“I was following my mother’s instructions not to get engaged until I graduated,” he says. “The night I finished my last course, I was anxious.”

So anxious that he proposed to Joyce in his car in front of 302 Broadway. A year later, they were married.

Brian began his career in education as a high school social studies teacher and retired as an assistant principal in guidance in 2002. Joyce also worked as a teacher but dreamed of law school. Following the birth of their fourth child, with the support of her mother and Brian, she earned a law degree from St. John’s in 1988. She eventually joined MetLife as managing attorney in the company’s Long Island office, a position she’s held for 18 years.

The couple has kept their Fordham-Marymount connection alive. Joyce has served on the board of the Marymount Alumnae Association of Fordham University (she was president of the alumnae board at the time of the consolidation with Fordham). And she and Brian continue to support the Marymount Legacy Fund, an endowed scholarship fund that helps young women follow their educational dreams at Fordham.

Earlier this month, the Abamonts returned to Fordham to celebrate their 50th reunion—their first as Golden Rams—during Jubilee weekend. Joyce was presented with the Marymount Golden Dome Award, which is given each year to an alumna whose efforts of service and achievement have benefited Marymount.

With a 50th wedding anniversary coming up next July, Joyce recalls that it was those days at 302 Broadway that really brought the couple together.

“After that year at Fordham, we both knew,” she says. “And that hasn’t changed.”

—Maja Tarateta

Take, for example, Joannah Caneda, FCRH ’06, LAW ’14, and Rob Gunther, FCRH ’06, who met at Rose Hill early their freshmen year, when Joannah offered Rob a slice of a Pugsley pie. He said yes. “It was a no-brainer!” he exclaims. And so was their relationship.

“I think as best as two 18 year olds can figure things out, we were just certain,” Rob says. “It was something that was just happening every day. It happened strong. It happened fast. And it continues to the present day.”

After the shared slice, they started dating and attended the President’s Ball together in October. “We made it official in McGinley,” says Joannah, citing the original location of the annual extravaganza. Similar interests fueled the connection. They both grew up on Long Island (although Joannah was born in the Philippines), and they each double majored in history and American studies. They worked on The Ram and at the Ram Van together (he was a driver; she worked in the office). They also participated in the Global Outreach program. It was their separate trips—his to Tijuana, hers to Mississippi—that got them interested in joining the Peace Corps together.

“Fordham’s mission of service and the service trips at the school planted the seed,” Rob says. “My worldview broadened.”

After graduating, they started the lengthy Peace Corps application process. At that time, couples who wanted to be stationed together had to be married for at least six months. So they wed in a civil ceremony in November 2008, followed by a church ceremony in May 2009. A few weeks later, they were on a plane to Ecuador.

They were placed in a remote town 10 hours outside of Quito, where running water, electricity, and internet service were sporadic. “We relied on each other for a lot,” Joannah says. “The work-life balance is different in the Peace Corps because your work is your life, but … it was basically a two-year-long honeymoon!”

Among their Peace Corps projects, Joannah focused on child-maternal health, speaking in schools and the community about topics like diet and hygiene; Rob taught community members how to build eco-friendly toilets that could transform waste into compost.

Joannah took the LSATs in Quito so she could begin law school at Fordham when they returned in fall 2011. She’s now an associate at O’Melveny & Myers. Rob is working on his MFA in fiction at Queens College at night and caring for their 14-month-old son, Robert Joseph Gunther IV (aka Robbie), during the day. They’re looking forward to returning to Fordham to celebrate their 10th reunion during Jubilee weekend, June 3 to 5—and maybe even introducing Robbie to the pizza that started it all.

“I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to go to Fordham. And to meet Rob,” Joannah says. “It led me on the path to the rest of my life.”

—Maja Tarateta