Wedding Bells Class of 2023
By Maliya V. Ellis and Sophia S. Liang, Crimson Staff WritersFabian Koenig ’22-’23 and Maximilian Scheuplein
Fabian Koenig ’22-’23 and Maximilian “Maxi” Scheuplein’s wedding has been nine years and thousands of miles in the making.
In the summer of 2014, the two met in their hometown of Frankfurt, Germany through a website for gay teenagers. Fabian was about to start high school; Maxi had just graduated high school and was about to start his bachelor’s. They stayed up until 5 a.m. messaging each other that first day, then exchanged texts and hours-long voice recordings constantly over the next several weeks.
“I feel like we were best friends from the first message,” Fabian says. He came out to his mom two days after meeting Maxi in person for the first time.
In 2017, when Fabian graduated from high school and Maxi graduated from university, they transitioned to a whirlwind long-distance relationship. Fabian traveled the world during a gap year, then came to Harvard for college, while Maxi got a master’s at University College London, worked at Oxford and New York University, and ended up in the Netherlands for a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience.
Around two years ago, when they started talking about getting engaged, they made it a tradition to window-shop for rings in each new city they visited together, enjoying the free samples of champagne at fancy jewelry stores.
They eventually settled on a custom-ordered ring from Amsterdam. However, the proposal itself still came as a surprise.
On a trip to San Francisco last December, they hiked up a hill overlooking the ocean at sunset. When they reached the top, Maxi set up a tripod under the guise of doing a photoshoot. The two had gotten manicures for the first time a couple days prior, so Fabian joked, “My finger is ready; you can put it on!” He thought it was funny when Maxi got down on one knee — “and then he pulled out the box, and I was like, ‘Oh, wait! This is for real.’”
“I forgot everything I wanted to say,” Maxi laughs. “When you listen to the video now, the only thing I’m asking is, ‘Yes? You sure?’”
He was. The couple is planning a courthouse wedding in Frankfurt this July, followed by a small celebration with their families. In the fall, Fabian will move to Los Angeles to work in consulting, and Maxi will return to the Netherlands for the last year of his doctorate. Afterward, they hope to reunite and finally close the long-distance chapter of their relationship.
In hindsight, though, both agree that the challenge of growing up and changing alongside each other — developing their own interests and pursuing their own educations while remaining committed to a partner — made their relationship stronger.
“Having to overcome all these hurdles that come with long-distance relationships really made me feel this is definitely the right person to spend the rest of my life with,” Maxi says. “It’s the way you have to communicate with each other, the way you have to know each other in order to make this work across the Atlantic.”
Lindsey B. Bouldin ’22-’23 and Evan T. Anderson
Lindsey B. Bouldin ’22-’23 and Evan T. Anderson’s relationship was long-distance “from the get-go,” Lindsey says. Even though they’d attended the same high school in central Tennessee, they only began dating in 2020 when they were both in college — Lindsey at Harvard, Evan at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
In March 2020, halfway through her gap semester, Lindsey flew to Knoxville to visit Evan, “the day that the first confirmed case of Covid was in Tennessee.” Unable to fly back to Boston, Lindsey’s intended two-week visit home turned into a year-and-a-half stay. The change of plans, though unexpected, granted the couple valuable time in person together. Lindsey rented an apartment a five-minute drive away from Evan’s dorm, enabling them to spend weekends exploring Knoxville and camping in the Smoky Mountains.
But in the fall of 2021, when Lindsey returned to Harvard’s campus, the pair had to switch back into long-distance mode. “It was definitely an adjustment,” Lindsey says. But the duo has figured out a good system: they schedule virtual date nights every weekend, prioritize visiting each other during school breaks, and text every day. “I feel like we’re both really good texters,” she says.
Marriage had been on Lindsey’s mind since a year into their relationship, but her convictions solidified the summer before senior year, when she started picturing her life after graduation. “I knew whatever I do in my life, I'd want to do it with Evan,” she says. “Why delay the inevitable, you know?”
Evan was more hesitant. “I just wasn’t sure if I was ready for it,” he says. But in the last year, he’s become interested in Catholicism, and his religious commitment has inspired a newfound appreciation for marriage. “That has really cast marriage in a new light for me, and made me realize that it was something that I really wanted, and something that I really wanted with Lindsey.”
Lindsey, who grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, says she’s still learning about Catholicism. “It’s more of a slower path that I’m going on, but I think it’s the path to the same destination,” she says. The two are planning to convert to Catholicism together through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program.
This past January, during a trip to the Virgin Islands, Evan proposed. “It just felt like the first step in something really great and really beautiful,” he says.
The couple are currently planning their wedding, which is slated for next May. In the meantime, they will both move to Knoxville following their respective graduations, after which Evan will pursue a master’s degree. They are already planning their honeymoon: a road trip to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Badlands, and other national parks.
Most of all, the two are excited just to be together in person again and experience “the little moments that you don’t really get when you’re long distance,” like cooking and drinking coffee together — or as Lindsey calls it, “the boring life stuff that’s kind of boring when you’re alone, but is more meaningful and special when you’re with another person.”
Christian J. Rodriguez ’23 and Nyckole Lázaro Quintero ’24
It all started when Nyckole Lázaro Quintero ’24 spotted two anime keychains hanging off Christian J. Rodriguez’s ’23 backpack. It was a Friday night in the spring of 2022, and Nyckole was outside Fong Auditorium stringing up lights for Harvard College Faith and Action’s weekly “DOXA” worship meeting. “Hey,” she recalls saying to him, “I like your keychains.”
Christian, a long-time HCFA member, turned around with a “huge smile,” pleasantly surprised to meet “another anime connoisseur who also liked Jesus,” he remembers. “That was pretty cool for me.” After the event, the pair continued their conversation in Ticknor Lounge, where they talked about everything from anime to their spiritual beliefs.
For the rest of that semester, they frequented cafes in Harvard Square and “would occasionally flirt, but no one did anything,” Nyckole says. Because both had recently exited relationships the previous semester, they were reluctant to rush into anything, even though they knew they both liked each other.
They texted only sporadically throughout that summer but reconnected on Nyckole’s Minecraft server and then in person at an HCFA retreat the week before school began. On the first day of school, they got bubble tea and had a conversation that would prove decisive, about how they had each grown in their faith over the summer. “It was really important for me to hear that God was working in [Nyckole’s] life as an individual, and not just because I was there or when I was talking to her about what I believe,” Christian says.
Their last stop that night was the Quincy Grille, where they sat in a booth together, finally confessed their feelings for each other, and officially started dating.
From there, it wasn’t a long journey to engagement. Though originally Nyckole had imagined dating for longer before engagement, her ideal timeline “completely changed” when she saw how much her family “adored” Christian. Just four months into their relationship, the couple was already talking about potential timelines for engagement. Over winter break, they planned out their “entire hypothetical future together,” Christian says. “Things just clicked.”
On April 29, following their eight-month anniversary meal at Spring Shabu Shabu, Christian told Nyckole that a mutual friend needed help taking headshots for an internship. Halfway through the photo session on Weeks Bridge, the friend volunteered to take some photos of the couple, too. Christian moved behind Nyckole as if to pose high-school-prom-style, then got down on one knee instead. Overcome by laughter, and later by tears, she turned around and said yes.
The couple is planning to tie the knot next summer. In the meantime, Christian will be teaching at the middle school he attended in Lawrence, Massachusetts, while Nyckole finishes her senior year at Harvard. Eventually, Christian hopes to become a dentist, while Nyckole wants to become a math teacher.
Both of them emphasize how lucky they feel to have found a life partner in each other. “I don’t want to have to build my own foundation and then add someone to it; I want to build that foundation with someone from the beginning,” Christian says. “And I’m glad I found someone like Nyckole who I’m ready to do that with.”
Nyckole agrees: “I wouldn’t want to go through daily life with someone else.”
Carter J. Martindale ’23 and Elise L. Fischer
Carter J. Martindale ’23 and Elise L. Fischer wouldn’t have met if not for the pandemic.
After Harvard went virtual in spring of 2020, Carter came across a group of Harvard students looking to fill a room in their Utah apartment. Carter made the move to Provo, where he ended up meeting Elise.
One night, Carter and Elise, then a student at Brigham Young University, both attended a mutual friend’s gathering and got to chatting in the hot tub. Carter mentioned his interest in Taylor Swift’s “Evermore” album, which was also one of Elise’s favorites. “I can’t let this one go,” Elise recalls thinking.
Shortly thereafter, the pair went on their first official date: “hammocking” in a local park. They found ample common ground, from their similar taste in memes to their shared love of thrillers and mysteries to their compatible religious beliefs — both are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
They had only planned to hang out for a couple hours but ended up staying for nine. “We just kept talking for, like, forever,” Carter says.
For the rest of that spring, the duo went on dates either every day or every other day. Carter had an internship in Palo Alto that summer, so the pair went long-distance, and they stayed in that mode when he returned to Cambridge for his junior year. They reunited last summer, when Carter took an internship in Utah.
The lead-up to the engagement wasn’t a surprise; the pair had been talking about engagement for a while and even went ring shopping together. (“I was not about to just buy a random ring without her having looked at it!”) But when it came to the moment itself, Carter kept it hush-hush.
On a morning in July, he found a hiking trail with a secluded clearing and enlisted a couple friends to set up a blanket with rose petals and pictures of the couple. Then he drove back down and picked up Elise, who expected a routine hike. Ten feet into the trail, he led her into the clearing and proposed. “It definitely caught me off guard, especially because I really thought we were doing this hike,” Elise says. “He did a really good job.”
They didn’t finish the rest of the hike; they left and got Korean barbecue instead.
They got married in December in a small ceremony in Elise’s hometown. This semester, Elise elected to finish her BYU graduation requirements online, enabling the couple to move into an off-campus apartment near Fresh Pond. They settled into a routine — Elise would often drive Carter to campus in the mornings, and the two would sometimes work in Quincy House together or hang out with Carter’s blockmates.
After their respective graduations, they will move to Austin, Texas, where Carter will work for a legal tech company and Elise will attend nursing school.
The pair still marvels that the pandemic precipitated the start of their relationship. “It’s worked out to be where we are now,” Carter says. “So yeah, it was like a miracle.”
Cameron M. Stone ’23 and Savannah J. Stone (née Fisher)
Cameron M. Stone ’23 calls his first date with his now-wife “kind of unorthodox”: After a mutual friend introduced him to Savannah J. Stone (née Fisher), they went on a group date shooting guns in the Utah desert, followed by dinner.
“Really safe first date when you don’t know someone, going out into the wilderness with guns,” Savannah says with a laugh. But after getting to know Cameron, she was immediately “smitten.” She remembers telling her mom over the phone late that night: “If it’s not this boy, I don’t want any other boy.”
The two began dating in January 2021, while Cameron was taking Harvard classes remotely from Utah and Savannah was attending Brigham Young University. That August, the weekend before he was set to return to Harvard to resume in-person classes, Cameron proposed.
“Savannah always joked with me that she would marry me even if I wrapped a blade of grass around her finger instead of a real diamond ring,” he says. So he had a florist make a custom engagement ring out of grass, and he surprised her with it on a picnic date.
“And she kept her word,” he smiles.
Cameron and Savannah maintained a long-distance engagement throughout the fall semester, then reunited in Utah for their wedding on January 7, 2022 — coincidentally one year to the day after their first date. Both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they were married in Mount Timpanogos Temple, against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and surrounded by 500 friends and family members from across the country.
“As part of our faith, the wedding ceremony, in the prayer that they give, they replace words like ‘until death do you part’ with ‘for time and all eternity,’” Cameron says. “So we have a belief that we’re married for this life and the next, which was pretty special and meaningful for us.”
“It was so exciting to see so many people being absolutely supportive and taking a chance on two kids getting married and coming all the way to Utah to celebrate with us,” Savannah says.
Savannah transferred to the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the newlyweds now live together in an apartment in Cambridge. They enjoy hanging out with Cameron’s friends in Mather House, trying new restaurants, and staying active by lifting, practicing yoga, and playing tennis and pickleball.
After they both graduate this May, they plan to relocate to London, where Cameron will work as a software engineer, and explore Europe while Savannah takes a gap year before starting dental school. They hope to eventually settle down in the Bay Area to stay close to their families in California. “A really cool aspect of getting married young is us being able to make these really big, game-time life decisions that usually people are making alone, together,” Savannah says.
Indeed, when asked what married life is like, they answer in unison: “The best!”
Kat S. Boit ’22-’23 and Ben B. Hebert
Kat S. Boit ’22-’23 and Ben B. Hebert describe their relationship as a “slow burn.”
They first met on the robotics team at their high school in Granby, Connecticut, and although Kat developed a bit of a crush, they stayed just friends for a couple years. “I just thought he was so out of my league,” Kat says.
Their romance didn’t begin until 2017, Kat’s junior year of high school, when Ben had already gone off to college at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The two kept in touch through a larger group chat, which turned into one-on-one phone calls, which eventually led to Kat inviting Ben to a party when he came home for spring break — a set crew party for their high school’s production of “Cinderella.” They made it official a month later.
For the next few years, the couple braved long-distance. Ben would make the six- to seven-hour drive down from Rochester every couple months to spend a weekend at Harvard. In the interim, Kat says, “we Skyped each other pretty much every day.”
The pandemic would prove pivotal for the pair. After being kicked off campus in March 2020, it took Kat only two weeks at home to decide to move in with Ben in Rochester. “My parents thought I was crazy!”
But as Kat tells it, their decision to move in together was a very thoughtful one. “I honestly felt like Ben was the person for me after probably a year into our relationship,” she says. “But I was very insistent on, like, I really need to be able to live with you first. I need to make sure that we’re compatible, and also we just need to grow up a little more.”
The two shared a 90-square-foot bedroom for the next year and a half (Kat took a year off school), and the tight quarters only brought them closer. “We definitely handled it a lot better than I would have thought,” Ben says. “That really cemented the idea that, like, we’re definitely it.”
When Ben graduated in spring 2021, he found an engineering job in Massachusetts, and the two moved into an apartment in Boston where they’re been living together since, along with their cat, Maisy. They cook together nearly every night, and unwind with yoga or games — Myst and Dungeons & Dragons are favorites.
Kat expected Ben to propose — they’d been talking about marriage “for a long time,” Ben says — but she was still surprised when it happened. After securing Kat’s parents’ blessing, Ben planned a trip to Cape Cod in June of 2022, framed as a long-overdue anniversary present. When he took her on a walk to the beach, Kat had her suspicions — the day was almost too sunny, the beach too empty — but she dismissed them when she couldn’t spot any ring-box-shaped objects in Ben’s pockets.
On a secluded stretch of shoreline, Ben brought out the ring he had hidden behind his car keys and proposed. “It just felt right,” he says.
The couple will be married in July, in a small ceremony in Brookline. After tying the knot, they’ll move to New Haven, where Kat will pursue a Ph.D. in Biology at Yale.
Polina Galouchko ’23 and Benjamin J. Porteous ’22
“We just talk, talk, talk, talk,” Benjamin J. Porteous ’22 says of his relationship with Polina Galouchko ’23. “That’s probably our favorite hobby.”
The pair began talking — quite literally — on Valentine’s Day last year, when a mutual friend invited them both to a group dinner in Dunster House dining hall. They quickly bonded over “an incredibly interesting conversation” about literature and philosophy, Polina says.
“I remember her as a lively conversationalist, just really interesting and thoughtful,” Benjamin agrees.
Although they bumped into each other a couple more times afterward, they didn’t really reconnect until the end of the school year. Polina, then a junior, was staying on campus to work at Senior Week and Commencement events, while Benjamin was preparing to deliver the Latin Salutatory at his own graduation ceremony. They found themselves spending more and more time together that May, until they finally made it official the night before Commencement — mere hours before Benjamin was set to appear onstage.
“We were just walking around the Quad and talking and talking, and I felt this guilt because he had to get up at 5 a.m. the next morning,” Polina recalls. “And right around midnight, he said, ‘Would you consider dating me?’”
“Scrap the Latin oration — there was more important stuff going on!” Benjamin says.
A year later, the duo can even finish each other’s sentences. When asked to describe their shared interests, Benjamin starts: “Classical music…”
“Opera,” Polina adds.
“Visiting historic churches of all kinds.”
“Traveling.”
“Ah, and this is my new fun fact for Zoom meetings —”
“Soviet comedies!”
They come from “different and yet very analogous” cultures, Benjamin says — although he attends an Anglo-Catholic church and she a Russian Orthodox one, they both love elaborate “high church” traditions, such as incense, beautiful vestments, and music.
Their academic pursuits are analogous, too: Polina will start a master’s in political science at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies this fall, and Benjamin is currently enrolled in the equivalent master’s program studying China.
In fact, Benjamin’s knowledge of Communist China has helped him bond with Polina’s parents, who grew up in the Soviet Union. This past winter break, when the couple traveled to Europe to visit Polina’s family, Benjamin showed up at their home wearing a fluffy winter hat with ear flaps which a Chinese friend had gifted him.
“It looked like their Soviet comrade had just arrived,” Polina chuckles. (“I didn’t wear it with any ulterior motives,” Benjamin swears.)
With her parents’ blessing obtained, Benjamin proposed during that trip, on Polina’s birthday, in a Baroque church in Croatia overlooking the Adriatic Sea. They’ll be getting married this June on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, where Benjamin went to summer camp and where his parents were married.
Now, their conversations have turned to the seating charts for the wedding reception as they figure out how to arrange guests “from all walks of life.”
“There should be some really interesting conversations at the wedding,” Benjamin says.
“And good music,” Polina adds.