College. It’s a time to find yourself, figure out who you are, what your passions are and what you want to do with your life. For a few lucky students, it’s also a time to find your lifelong partners. A few alumni at Binghamton University did just that. Here are some happy couples who met as college students and took the relationship all the way to the altar.
Rachel Adanit, ‘13 and Ayal Adanit, ‘14
“Ayal and I lived in the same off-campus student housing apartments and met through there and we were in organic chemistry together. Favorite memories would be hiking in the Nature Preserve together.”
Supattra Samanyaphon, ‘08 and Jeremy Grubard, ‘07
“My husband Jeremy and I are both [BU] alumni, I graduated in 2008 and he graduated a year before, in 2007. We met each other in one of the first-ever computer graphic design classes in the spring of 2007. If my memory serves me correctly, Mike Wesko and his colleague Cindy Blackman were pushing for the graphic design program to modernize. Both of us being art majors, I’m sure we had crossed paths in the Fine Arts building, where if you were an art major, that’s where you spent a lot of time … We sat together in the computer lab in the Science IV building and remained just as friends for the semester. Once the semester was over, Jeremy graduated and I had one year left. Over the next few years, we kept in touch and saw more and more of each other and met our respective [BU] circle of friends and in 2015 we got married.”
Jacob Shamsian, ‘15 and former Arts & Culture (Release) Editor and Rebecca Shamsian, ‘14
“We met before classes started, actually. The two of us had a mutual friend who invited us to both hang out in her dorm room the weekend we moved in. We spent the day together as a group, going to University Fest, and hit it off. We’ve been together since!
I proposed to Rebecca at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a few years after we graduated. We had a lovely date there a year earlier, and I thought it would be a meaningful and beautiful place to propose. One of her best friends, who didn’t live in the NYC area, was visiting and I conspired with her and other [BU] alumni friends — including the mutual friend who introduced us — to spend the day there before I surprised her with the ring. Our wedding was a little over a year later, [on] Aug. 5, 2018.
It’s hard to pick a specific [favorite BU] memory. We loved spending Friday nights together at Chabad and hanging around with friends in our apartment building afterward. I loved it when Rebecca snuck off some challah she made for Challah for Hunger and gave it to me while I was working late nights in the Pipe Dream office.”
Michael Dorfman, ‘07 and Kristyn Dorfman, ‘07
“We met through a bunch of mutual friends freshman year. Kristyn was in a relationship with one of those friends until early senior year. I think our first actual meeting place was on a group outing to the Outback Steakhouse on Vestal Parkway. It was freshman year first semester, which would’ve been late 2003. Like I said, Kristyn was in a relationship, so this was not love at first sight, this was social dining. I remember speaking to her a little bit, but nothing more than vague pleasantries really stands out. Except [for] the blooming onion, Outback [Steakhouse] outdid themselves that night, what a job.
Senior year we were both living off campus. I was at a house on the corner of Seminary [Avenue] and Chapin [Street]. Kristyn was living at a house on “the bad side” of Oak [Street]. I think we got closer when I started driving Kristyn back from class on campus. I had my family’s old Grand Voyager minivan, so I was kind of irresistible in that sense. She could only take so many flirtatious commutes down Riverside before giving in. I have fond memories of going Downtown to the bars together, the trivia nights at Cyber Cafe West and of course frequenting all the fine dining establishments the greater Binghamton area has to offer (read: Moe’s Southwest Grill).
As for full circle, today we’re back driving a minivan (a hybrid Toyota Sienna). And while it’s a little less steamy than it used to be in there, given the three kids we now have sitting in the back, I like to think much of my allure still derives from how my commanding handle of its automatic transmission and the seemingly effortless way I steer our family through the perils of suburbia roadways.
[We got married on] Aug. 14, 2011, at Bridgeview Yacht Club in Island Park, New York. It was supposed to be an outdoor ceremony but we had something of a monsoon that day. Miraculously everyone made it to the affair, albeit two different cars were totaled en route succumbing to water damage. A lot of people came up to us throughout the day and told us rain is good luck but I guess that didn’t extend to the invitees who lost their rides.”
Barbara Freiband Klein, ‘92 and Jonathan Klein, ‘91
“We met 33 years ago, living on the same floor in Seneca Hall of College-in-the-Woods. We supported each other pledging at the same time — Sigma Delta Tau and Sigma Alpha Mu — and have the best memories. We go back every year to visit … We got married in 1995.”