Kismet may always play a role in affairs of the heart, but fortuitous events can make romance seem deliberately designed by fate. By coincidence, this Memorial Day weekend three couples from the class of 2002 got married. In another fluke, two of the grooms, Jonathan and Dan, were best friends in junior high school; they lost touch during college and became reacquainted during first-year orientation at Columbia.
That all of the brides and grooms met and started dating as students simply underscores that MBAs’ social lives are often as full as their academic experiences. Despite the demands of classes, club activities, professional networking and job seeking, students say that dating is “rampant.” Marriages between MBAs are not uncommon—virtually every issue of Hermes features Class Notes entries about recent alumni mergers. But perhaps no other weekend in recent memory has seen the stars align quite so perfectly.
Jonathan & Andrea
For a citywide scavenger hunt during their first-year orientation, student teams from the class of 2002 were charged with finding the famous owl ensconced in the robes of the Alma Mater statue. Teammates Jonathan Feldman and Andrea Lieberman found the hidden bird; more important, as it turns out, they found each other.
As Andrea and Jonathan anticipated their wedding on Memorial Day weekend, the fact that they met while searching for a hidden symbol seemed prescient: on that August afternoon, neither was looking for a date, let alone a spouse. “Career-focused” is how Andrea describes herself then. School was all-consuming. Andrea and Jonathan began as good friends and trusted homework collaborators, laying the foundation for what their relationship eventually became.“We were very good friends that entire first year,” says Jonathan. “We sat next to each other in every class.” They got to know each other during cluster events and study sessions. (“I knew how smart she was,” says Jonathan. “That’s why I sat next to her.”) As summer approached, says Andrea, “We worked through interview questions together and talked about our thought processes vis-à-vis internships.”
When both landed summer internships at Merrill Lynch (he in investment banking, she in equity research), the romance that finally developed, according to some classmates, was long overdue. The Bottom Line had speculated (prematurely) about a romantic relationship months earlier. And, Andrea remembers, “People kept saying to me that he was so good to me. And I said, ‘You’re right.’”
Enduring their own—and each other’s—demanding schedules might not seem inherently romantic, but business school was paradoxically conducive to their budding relationship. Both were on campus almost constantly, attended the same cluster functions (“We didn’t have to choose between an event and being together,” Andrea explains), spent three-day weekends together and shared all of their vacations and study trips.
Jonathan’s proposal last May—at the Alma Mater statue—was a surprise to Andrea. They were married in New Jersey, honeymooned in Hawaii and will continue to live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Jonathan is now an associate in investment banking at Merrill Lynch, and Andrea is completing her second master’s degree at the School of International and Public Affairs.
No one knows the true significance of the Alma Mater owl; it was carved into the statue by the artist as a symbolic, if mysterious, gesture. Legend held, in the days before coeducation, that a Columbia College man who found the owl would also find a wife at Barnard. Today, the owl is said by the Columbia community to represent three cherished qualities in life and in love: wisdom, luck and success.
Sara & Joshua
Sara Gaviser did not expect to meet her spouse at Columbia Business School, even though her brother Michael Gaviser ’96 had met his future wife in preorientation math camp. Sara recalls, “The night before [school began], my sister-in-law said, ‘Have fun tomorrow. Maybe you’ll meet your husband.’ I said, ‘Yeah, whatever.’” As it turned out, not only did she meet Joshua Leslie the following day, she met him at math camp. Although Sara and Josh didn’t yet know it, everything was in place for the Gaviser family legacy to be fulfilled.
The two didn’t share any classes, but Sara and Josh soon met up again at the New York Cares volunteer day in the Bronx. Their first date was at Morningside Heights’s Café Pertutti in October. By the time they reached final exams in December, their relationship had grown.
Sara and Josh got engaged in New York right after Spring Fling during their last semester at the School. At their graduation dinner, Sara’s mother felt obliged to make a toast to Columbia Business School for its matchmaking success. Josh joined the sales team at CommVault Systems, a software company in New Jersey, and Sara joined US Trust as a retail analyst.
Between cooking, crossword puzzles and exploring the city as only nonnatives can (Josh is from San Francisco, and Sara is from Minneapolis), the couple planned a Memorial Day weekend wedding. They were married at a synagogue in Minneapolis. “A pretty traditional kind of wedding,” says Sara, “and pretty big” — to accommodate the bride and groom’s large families. It is no surprise that many alumni were in attendance.
After the wedding, the couple took a break from their regular New York pleasures to visit Italy, stopping in Rome, Capri and the Amalfi Coast.
Dan & May
Dan Lifton, an entrepreneur, wasn’t looking for a wife when he began the MBA Program, but he was seeking funding for an Internet start-up. He logged into a chat room for entering students to do some preliminary networking, and when his new classmate May Yamada mentioned her prior career in venture capital, he asked for her phone number. She couldn’t line up the funds, but no matter; as it turned out, he already sensed that his interest went beyond business.
Once on campus, Dan and May developed a friendship during long study sessions as well as turns on the dance floor. Both children of first-generation immigrants to the United States — his parents are from Moscow, and hers are from Tokyo — Dan and May found their values aligned in the areas of family, education and work.
Initially, however, May was oblivious to Dan’s romantic interest. “Dan used to sit next to me and my friend in the library, and I always thought he liked her, not me.” But when the two attended the Fall Ball together, ostensibly as friends, she noticed Dan’s unwillingness to swap salsa partners — not to mention his eagerness to try out every dance step (“without fear,” she jokes).
It was while traveling on School trips to Japan and California that they discovered just how much they wanted to be together, and their romance fully blossomed. Back on campus, Dan and May attempted to keep their relationship a secret, even from close friends. They often left events separately and met up outside, sneaking away together like a couple of teenagers. They managed to keep their romance clandestine until a winter-break ski trip to Telluride.
Dan proposed in October at a historic seaside mansion in Newport, R.I., where they were married on May 25. Their wedding day celebrated their different cultural backgrounds and their shared love of dance. “It’s a Russian-Jewish ceremony, so we’ll dance the hora,” May says. “Then there will be formal dancing — the Japanese like formal dancing — and then faster Latin numbers for the kids.”
In June, the couple plans to travel to Japan to visit May’s family and pose for formal pictures in tsunokakushi, traditional matrimonial dress. They will continue to live in New York City, where May works in the pharmaceutical industry and Dan has returned to his start-up roots running RubberWorks International LLC (a recycling-based manufacturing company that produces microground rubber powder from scrap tires), which received financing from the School’s Lang Fund. “In my two years at Columbia, I became a Mister, earned an MBA and got a check to start my business,” he says and adds with a laugh, “Not bad!”