Kent State employees who met their spouses and significant others at the university share their stories and photos.

I am in the third year of my master’s program in clinical mental health counseling. My fiancé Benjamin Mathie and I are getting married June 7.

Nicole Davis, Kent State graduate
student, and her fiancé Benjamin Mathie
met as student workers on campus.

I was a student employee working at Fleet Services, a department within University Facilities Management, and Benjamin was a student employee of the Grounds Department. We met in the hallway of University Facilities Management and were friends for two years before we started dating in the summer of 2011. Benjamin and I would talk while standing in line for the time clock and then keep talking while we walked to our cars. Over time, it turned into something more than friends, and we started dating. If it wasn't for being student employees at Kent State, we would never have met. All of our engagement pictures were taken on the Kent Campus, and we are very grateful for our college experience bringing us together. We are currently planning our wedding and couldn't be more excited. Thank you Kent State!

I graduated in May 2011 with an undergraduate degree in psychology and then started my master’s program in fall 2011, and will graduate in May 2014 right before our wedding. Benjamin graduated in May 2012 with a degree in middle childhood education.

- Nicole Davis, graduate student, clinical mental health counseling

During the fall of our high school senior year in 1985, two kids from two different states came to Kent State's Honors College scholarship competition. I was only 17. I came down with such a bad cold that I couldn't participate in the vocal audition offered that weekend, and the admissions counselors shunted me over to the Honors College Distinguished Scholar Award (DSA) exam track. The event schedule began with a tour via campus buses. A nice looking, sandy-brown haired guy asked to sit with me on the bus, and, with the exception of the exam period, we talked all day long.

Laurel Myers Hurst, adjunct faculty at Kent State, met
her husband when they both attended Kent State's Honors
College scholarship competition in 1985 during their high
school senior year.

When my mother and I connected at our Kent Student Center rendezvous spot, I realized I had no idea of the fellow's name, even though we had shared stories from childhood through high school. I quickly introduced him as, "The boy I talked to all day," and we went our separate ways — he to Bowling Green University and I to University of Pittsburgh, or so we thought. On a subsequent weekend, I auditioned for and was awarded a Kent State Creative Scholar Award, and he was granted a DSA plus Liquid Crystal Institute funding.

During freshman orientation week at Kent State that fall, my dormitory phone rang. A deep voice on the other end of the line asked if I was Laurel from Pennsylvania, and if I had talked to a guy during the Honors College event the previous fall. "This is that guy, I'm David." We met that night at the Rathskeller and many dates followed. Our first kiss was in the gardens just east of the Kent Student Center, and our favorite place for a romantic stroll was Lilac Lane in May. We married in 1992 and eventually returned to Kent in 1996. David is now a campus minister serving among Mainland Chinese students and their families, and I am an adjunct faculty member in music at Kent State University at Geauga and the Regional Academic Center in Twinsburg.

We have two sons, now serving in the Navy and Air Force, and two daughters still at home, and it all started at that glass cube bus stop in the Kent Student Center plaza.

- Laurel Myers Hurst, adjunct faculty, Kent State University at Geauga and the Regional Academic Center in Twinsburg

Emily Vincent, director of media
relations at University Communications
and Marketing, poses for a photo during
Kent State's Homecoming celebration
with her husband Marc, who she met as
a student at the university, and their son
Hayden.

Kent State definitely played a role in my marriage. My husband and I were in the same freshman orientation class when we started at Kent State in fall 1993. Marc was a newspaper journalism major, and I majored in public relations, so we were both in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We had some classes together, like Newswriting that was taught by Stan Wearden, now dean of the College of Communication and Information, and saw each other in Taylor Hall and around campus. It wasn’t until our senior year that we discovered that we both lived in Manchester Hall. I wanted to interview him for a PR class project I had with PR professor Bill Sledzik, and at the time, Marc was managing editor of the Daily Kent Stater.

We started hanging out and dating, and six months later, he proposed to me in the Stater while I was reading it in the Planetarium in Smith Hall. It was Barb Hipsman, now retired journalism and mass communication professor, who recommended the jeweler where Marc bought the engagement ring.

This past summer, we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. We have an awesome 6-year-old son named Hayden.

Marc and I are both proud graduates of Kent State, and we have to thank the university for bringing a girl from Boston, N.Y., and a boy from Wakeman, Ohio, together!

- Emily Vincent, director, university media relations, University Communications and Marketing