Sweethearts

In honour of Valentine’s Day, we asked U of T couples to tell us the stories of how they met. Below is a selection.

Actor Turned Husband
I had been active in high school theatre, so in my first year at New College I signed up to be the assistant stage manager for The Brothers Karamazov.

Although I had a boyfriend, I became very good friends with Allan Price, a first-time actor who had landed the small role of Father Zosima. We started going to plays and spending time together in the New College music room listening to Beatles albums. We even selected our courses to avoid Wednesday afternoon lectures so we could go to the O’Keefe Centre and the Royal Alex at student matinee prices.

I eventually broke up with the boyfriend, and Allan and I were married six weeks after my graduation, in June 1968.

I am now an information technology consultant and no longer a stage manager, but Allan is still an actor. We have two children and celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary some time ago. Participation in activities outside of classes certainly worked out well for me!

Liz (Dolgy) Price
BA 1968 New College
Toronto

His Pulse Quickened…
My husband Rick and I met in 1967 on our first day of classes at U of T, on the St. George Campus. I was in nursing. For frosh week we had to dress up in lab coats and nurse’s caps and solicit males from each faculty and then take and record their pulse.

I recognized Rick from a high-school dance where he had accompanied another friend of mine, so I approached him and asked him what faculty he was in (Phys Ed) and whether or not he would let me take his pulse. He agreed and his pulse rate was high at 100+ (he must have liked me).

We dated through our days at U of T and married in 1973. We have been married for 38 years, and have three children and four grandchildren. Thanks U of T!

Moya Johnson
BScN 1971
Georgetown, Ontario

Hockey with Dad
I met Rick in the fall of 1981. I first saw him at the Benson building where I was trying to find a place to store my batons so that I could practice baton twirling in the gym. He was a Phys Ed student getting his locker. For several months after that, I tried to “bump into” him on campus – at the Ramsey Wright building where he had a class before me, at the New College deli, where I dragged my girlfriend so I could watch him eat lunch with his friends, and at the weekend pubs. When I found out that his name was Rick, I began to refer to him as “Rick with the beautiful eyes.”

He finally noticed me and, on December 4, 1981, asked me to come watch him play inter-faculty hockey for the Phys Ed Team. I sat with his father of all people. Afterward we went to “Frank Vetere’s” for pizza (several of his buddies tagged along so they could heckle from afar). Six years later, on April 25, 1987, we were married at U of T at Knox College. We will celebrate our 25th anniversary by going on a cruise with our two kids this year.

Heather Hadden (nee Lawson)
BSc Phm 1984

Exercise in Love
I was in my first year of physiotherapy in 1983. In my kinesiology class, the professor’s assistant, Larry, had enlisted our class to be subjects in his study. So once a week we went into a room, sat on a Cybex machine and extended our knees to strengthen our quadriceps. Some of us had electrical stimulation; I, luckily, did not. However, the computer always seemed to crash when I was on the machine, requiring some assistance from Larry.

By the end of the school year, the study was nearly complete. I needed some extra help preparing for my kinesiology exam so asked Larry. We went on our first date after the exam that April, and were engaged the following February. We married in May 1986 after I finished my BSc in Physical Therapy. Twenty-five years and four children later, we have relocated to Kamloops, B.C. I treasure those years I spent in Toronto, though. I met the love of my life at U of T, and I was fortunate to get my degree at a fabulous place in a field that I still love working in.

Patricia Takeuchi
BSc PT 1986

Commuting Connection
I saw David for the first time in the Sanford Fleming atrium. Because I commuted to the St. George campus every day from Ajax, I often arrived early, and would wait in the atrium for class to start. David also arrived early because he was commuting from Pickering. We started taking the GO train together and became friends. By the summer after first year, it had become ridiculous to keep saying we were just friends, so we started dating. To make it “official,” he asked me formally on MSN Messenger! I said yes but told him that it wasn’t a good way to ask. The next day, while I was taking a nap, he came over to my house and woke me up with a bouquet of red roses and asked me again.

We have many things in common. I am half Italian and he is full Italian but neither of us looks it. We both like looking at tall buildings and lakes. We are also both Catholic and come from fairly strict families. We have many opposite traits as well. I am messy and he is as neat as a pin. I like to decide things as I go and he likes always to plan ahead. He is “everything in moderation” and I am very “all or nothing.” I am a night owl and he is a morning person.

With all the things we have in common, and all our differences we balance each other out. One thing we both share a passion for, though, is each other.

Elisa McGee
MASc candidate, chemical engineering
U of T

Concrete Bonds
My husband, Duane McDonald, and I came to U of T and lived at the St. George Graduate Residence on Bloor St. in 1972. Duane came from Connecticut to study Victorian history. I came from France to be a teaching assistant in the French department. We met at the residence, and have remained in Toronto ever since. One year when the city repaved the sidewalks we engraved our names in the fresh cement. They remained there, on the south side Bloor, between the Royal Conservatory of Music and the residence, for years. Our friends used to get a real kick out of this. But the sidewalk may have been repaved by now.

Duane and I got married in 1973 (40th anniversary next year), first in Canada, then in France. We lived for quite a few years in U of T’s married student residences on Charles Street. Duane finished his master’s and went into the PhD program; I did my diploma in translation. We had a daughter (Alexandra) and a son (Eric). Both also graduated from U of T. And we hope our three grandsons will graduate from there as well! We have wonderful memory of our time at U of T and of all our wonderful friendships there.

Evelyne McDonald
Diploma in Translation 1976 Woodsworth
Toronto

Growing Stronger
My girlfriend, Clare Eno, and I first met in high school, but we only starting speaking to each other in Grade 12 (I was an awkward kid). By the end of the school year we both discovered that we had been accepted to Trinity College at U of T.

I had asked Clare to our high school prom, and we began dating over the summer before starting university. Clare was my first girlfriend, and I thought things were going well. Unfortunately they weren’t.

After the end of Frosh Week, she gently broke things off with me. While heartbroken, I was determined not to become the sad ex-boyfriend and to ensure that we would stay friends. After a couple months of university in which we saw each other a few times every week, she asked me out again, on Nov. 1, 2005.

We’ve now been together for more than six years, and despite the rocky periods and our different backgrounds (she’s from Barbados and I’m Armenian) we have emerged stronger – both as a couple and as individuals. She is my closest and best friend, and I’m thankful that we’re together every day.

Michael Keoshkerian
BA 2009 Trinity

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