All posts by: UMBC News Staff

We’re in the homestretch of Retriever Love Week here at the Alumni House, and we have quite a few stories left to go, so we’re making multiple posts today! Enjoy these tales of UMBC romance, and stay tuned for the next round…

Some of these stories, like the one Natalie Bacon Lockett ’03, visual and performing arts, sent our way, begin even before the college years! Natalie met her now-husband, Brad Lockett ’07, information systems, at the Black Student Overnight the spring before freshman year. One of the ice-breakers involved finding someone from the same area as you, and Brad, a New Jersey native, recognized Natalie’s Ocean Township High School T-shirt and made a beeline for her.

As it turned out, they lived just 20 minutes away from each other back in the Garden State, and had a lot of friends in common. Natalie says they hit it off right away, but they didn’t exchange information that day.

The next time they saw each other was at placement testing that summer. “As he tells the story, I was sitting by the pencil sharpener, and he broke his pencil [on purpose]  so that he would have to come by me and sharpen it,” Natalie says with a smile. They continued to talk after the test, but still didn’t exchange info.

On the first day of college, outside the old Pub at the University Center, Brad and Natalie ran into each other a third time, and she was so happy to see him she gave him “a HUGE hug.” By October 2, 1999, the two were officially dating, and in 2008, nine years to the day after they first became an item, the Locketts got married in old Ellicott City.

After seven years, Natalie says they’re “going strong,” and hopes that their two small children, born in 2012 and 2015, will be Retrievers someday. (Photo courtesy of Natalie Lockett, taken at the Black and Gold Ball c. 1999-2000.)

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In 2002, Michelle Jabes Corpora ’03, English and theatre, was the Retriever Weekly’s theatre critic, and Adam Corpora ’03, music, was one of the stars of that year’s production of Baby With the Bathwater. The pair had seen each other around at various Artist Scholars functions before, but it wasn’t until the dress rehearsal that Michelle attended to review that they were formally introduced.

“I guess I could say I started falling in love with him that night, because he was so ridiculously funny onstage,” says Michelle. She even called him out by name in her Retriever review of the show. But she didn’t see him again for another few weeks, until he and his roommates sat next to her and hers in the dining hall one night. From then on, the group was inseparable, and after “months of cajoling” from their friends, Michelle and Adam started dating the summer between their sophomore and junior year.

“Defining moments [in our relationship] happened on the UMBC campus: arguments in the [Erickson] courtyard, a first ‘I love you’ on the hill by the old apartments, many nights of fun with friends walking back to the dorms after picking up pizza and chips from The Spot,” Michelle says now. “He wanted to be a music teacher, and I wanted to be a writer—but those things were still so far away then.”

Michelle and Adam have been married for ten years now, and live in New York City with their two children. Michelle works in children’s book publishing – “Believe it or not, […] they pay me to dream up and write stories!” – while Adam is the music teacher at a middle school in Queens. This coming summer, they’ll be moving back to Maryland to raise their family and rejoin their loved ones. Michelle says that upon her return, she plans to revisit those places on campus where their relationship began.

“It’s been a wonderful journey, and we’re so happy to be coming home,” she says. (Photo courtesy of Michelle Corpora.)

Read about all the couples we’ve featured this year here!

Got good news? We want to hear it! Whether it’s a new job, family additions, interesting travels, reunions with classmates — or anything in between — submit a Class Note for the website and UMBC Magazine. We can’t wait to hear from you!

We’re halfway through our unofficial Valentine’s Extension Week! We’ve shared so many great stories with you already, and we have plenty more to go. We hope you’re feeling the love as much as we are.

Megan Smell Tarver ’04, psychology, remembers meeting her husband Curtis Tarver ’03, psychology, in their experimental psych class during her sophomore and his junior year. Curtis, on the other hand, remembers her from their sociology class the semester before, and from seeing her around Patapsco, where he worked at the desk.

“We didn’t actually become a couple until the waning days of my undergraduate career – just in time for me to head off to Florida for graduate school a few months later,” Curtis writes.

They decided to break up due to the distance, but, as Curtis puts it, that didn’t take. At their 2010 wedding, held in Baltimore County, they walked down the aisle to the UMBC alma mater, surrounded by friends and family, many of whom are also alumni. Today, the Tarvers live in Greensboro, North Carolina, with their two children, four-year-old Anastasia and two-year-old Austin. (Photo by Jason Putsché ’01, information systems, courtesy of Curtis Tarver.)

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In the spring of 1996, Matthew Koenigsberg ’98, English, was a transfer student from Catonsville Community College when he first sat behind his now-wife, Jessica Koenigsberg ’97, English, in an Early American Literature class. They got to know each other through the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on campus, and by the end of that year, they were close friends.

When the semester ended, Jess went back to her parents’ house in Cecil County, and one day in June, Matt drove up to see her. They went to the waterside, watched the ducks, and had dinner with her family. That was their first official date, and they continued their relationship into the next school year.

Jess graduated in May of 1997, and with a year left to go in school, Matt knew it was time to “paint or get off the ladder,” as his father would say. In early February 1998, he asked her parents for their blessing, and on Valentine’s Day, after dinner at Nacho Mama’s and a screening of The Wedding Singer, Matt proposed to Jessie. “[It] was pretty ironic that I was watching that movie with an engagement ring in my pocket,” Matt says now.

Matt graduated a few months later, and they were married on November 7, 1998. (Photo courtesy of Matt Koenigsberg.)

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Well, really just the best of times,” write Taylor Gaines ’13, biochemistry and molecular biology, and Taylor Westhoff ’13, modern languages and linguistics. 

Taylor 1 and Taylor 2 met as sophomores in the Social Justice Lounge of the Commons, and a friendship blossomed over burritos. For two years, they ran in the same circle of friends, sharing laughs at Late Night, Homecoming, and talent shows. Their group prided itself on being strictly platonic, but that was bound to change.

At the end of fall semester senior year, Taylor asked Taylor to go on a date at a local Indian restaurant, and Taylor agreed. From then on, they were inseparable, known affectionately by their friends as “Double T”. They helped each other through finals, job searches, and graduate school applications. Now, as Taylor is set to finish her graduate degree in speech pathology and Taylor passes the halfway mark in veterinary school, plans are underway for a summer 2017 wedding, kicked off by a proposal last summer in Mexico.

“Thanks, UMBC, for bringing us together,” says Double T. (Photo courtesy of Taylor Gaines, pictured on the right.)

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Sameeha Azeez Bricklemyer ’09, visual arts, was introduced to her husband Ryan Bricklemyer ’04, information systems, and M.S. ’06, information systems, at Quadmania 2009 by Jen Dress, UMBC’s Assistant Director of Student Life. Sameeha was a senior about to graduate, while Ryan was helping out as an alumni volunteer.

The following October, with the help of Dress and the UMBC’s Mama’s Boys, Ryan proposed to Sameeha with a Commons serenade. Their 2011 wedding was officiated by Dress, and the wedding party included friends from UMBC and Greek Life brothers and sisters from Pi Kappa Phi and Delta Phi Epsilon.

The Bricklemyers welcomed baby Esme on November 19, 2015, and Sameeha says that given the family’s deep roots in the University System of Maryland, “it was only fitting” that she was born at a University of Maryland hospital. (Photo courtesy of Sameeha Bricklemyer.)

Read about all the couples we’ve featured this year here!

So many of you have found lasting love at UMBC that we decided to extend Valentine’s Day to tell your stories! Here are four more.

Michael Glassman ’12, geography and environmental systems, met his now-wife, Michelle Colbert ’12, sociology, at UMBC in 2011. They were married in November 2015. (Photo courtesy of Michael Glassman.)

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People meet their life partners all kinds of ways these days: online, out and about, through mutual friends. Catherine Lane Kruder ’12, English, met her husband Josh Kruder ’11, computer science, in one of the oldest ways in the book: through her mother.

“We never would have met had [my mother not been] in the same computer science class as Josh in the winter of 2009,” Catherine says. “It was a set up from the beginning when she told me about the really cute [blonde, blue-eyed] guy in her class one night at dinner.”

Catherine’s mother told her to come see her before class the next day, and, while “cringing at the thought” of her mother playing matchmaker, Catherine agreed.

“[The] rest, as they say, is history.”

Catherine and Josh were married in 2012, and their daughter, Genevieve, will be a year old in March. To this day, Catherine says, her mother prides herself on what she calls “the set up of the century.” (Photo courtesy of Catherine Kruder.)

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Some of these stories cut right to the heart… literally. Kenneth Tai ’06, biochemistry and molecular biology, and Diana Salvador Tai first met in anatomy and physiology class while dissecting a cat.

“Romantic[,] huh?” Diana, then a pre-nursing student at UMBC, jokes now. “He was fascinated by my visual memorization skills[.]”

Their relationship only grew from there: from Phi Mu and Lambda Chi Alpha socials to late night practices for FASA [UMBC’s Filipino American Student Association]. They married in Washington, DC on August 8, 2008.

“A cat, a dog, and two beautiful kids later[,] we look forward to sharing our unfairytale-like story with them,” Diana writes. (Photo courtesy of Diana Tai.)

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Speaking of excellent memorization skills, Kathy Weems Guerra ’96, English, who met her husband Peter Guerra ’96, English, in Dr. Falco’s fall 1994 Medieval and Renaissance Literature class, says she helped him prepare for the final “because I take excellent notes and never missed class!” They were married in Annapolis in June 1997. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Guerra.)

Read about all the couples we’ve featured this year here!