Guest Writer Did you know that York is considered one of the top UK universities to find love? Join us this Valentine’s Day to hear heartwarming stories from alumni whose love stories started right here.
Samantha & Phil
Following an uneventful theatre trip, a friend and I were invited to the Rose & Crown pub. Upon arrival we were introduced to a new face, Phil, a third year economics student. The night was fine, we played doubles and had a few drinks but my friend and I both commented that new boy Phil was handsome but ‘a bit of a misery’.
A couple of weeks later we were out celebrating the end of second year exams when we were reunited with Phil. After escaping from his third year revision prison, it would be no mean feat to describe Phil’s personality transformation as a total “glow up”. He was a chatty, flirty, charming Sunderland lad, who over a series of nights out grew more entertaining and confident. We spent more and more time together until the pinnacle of our romance was reached when we shared our first kiss on the dance floor of Willow, surrounded by bowls of stale prawn crackers; £1 shots; and the melody of Rhianna’s We found Love in a Hopeless Place reverberating across the room. Phil was graduating in the summer so we spent the last few weeks getting to know each other and carrying on with our aptly named ‘whirlwind romance’.
One summer, lots of texts and a first date later Phil enrolled to study his masters back at York the following year. He graduated in 2012 and I graduated a year later. After graduation, we went back to our hometowns, but after enough long distance we decided to go travelling for two years in New Zealand and Asia. When we returned we settled in Newcastle for five years and then bought our first home in Derbyshire and started planning our wedding! We got married in Spain in August last year, surrounded by friends from University – one of them was even our celebrant! York got a special mention in the speeches on the day and will always have a special place in our hearts.
Beth and Callum
My partner and I actually met at school but coincidentally both came to York for undergraduate and that’s when our relationship started in 2013. We have stayed together since then, which was tough when we did a long-distance stint during my year abroad. Our first official date was at the York Dungeons!
We chose to live together during our fourth/ final year and then went on to rent privately after graduating in 2016 and adopted a rescue dog in 2018.
We bought our first house together in the summer of 2022 and got married two years later!
Lowri & Akilan
We met at Greg’s place for a scavenger hunt that was organised for our course. Not many people turned up, so they made two small teams, and we were on opposite teams. We still disagree about the fact that he cheated to win. I might not have won fairly that day, but he did win my heart.
Throughout our time at York we were in each others pockets, we were on the same projects, we went out on the town together, and supported each other through the pandemic and illness. So my pointer would be to go on the scavenger hunt – you might just meet the love of your life!
Akilan was an international student so his visa eventually ran out and he had to return to India after graduating. After doing long distance for a very long time, we decided to get married. We now live together in London and work for the same production company.
Becca & Chris
We met when I was in my second year and Chris was in his fourth year, at perhaps the classiest of York establishments, Salvos!
For our first date we went to Lucia’s and then we moved in together after graduating during lockdown – we haven’t looked back since! We later moved to Bristol where Chris completed his PhD and got engaged there in 2022. We met six years ago this February.
We have now been married for a year and half and currently live in Brighton where we are planning to buy our first home this year.
Lily & Ryan
It was my third week at York, and I decided to visit one of my new friends at her flat in Langwith. I was sitting on the table in the flat’s kitchen chatting to all of her flatmates, feeling slightly awkward surrounded by so many people I didn’t know. That’s when someone else’s conversation caught my attention – I heard the name of my favourite musical artist, Steven Wilson. This was hugely surprising to me, as I had met very few people up to this point in my life with similar musical taste to me. Of course, I decided to interject into the conversation. As it turns out, the conversation I had overheard was Ryan talking to another of his flatmates about a gig he was going to at the Royal Albert Hall that weekend. We immediately got talking about all things music, and we spent the rest of that evening chatting about our lives, listening to records and discovering a spooky amount of connections between us. It also transpired that we were actually on the same course – combined physics & electronics foundation year – I was on the physics stream and Ryan was on the electronics stream.
The next morning we headed to lectures together, and basically became inseparable from that moment on. It was too late for me to get a ticket to the gig, but he bought me home a signed poster that I still have now. We officially became a couple shortly after that and we haven’t looked back since!
We’ve now lived in Cambridge since we graduated in 2018. We’re both working full-time in the tech industry – I work as an innovation consultant and Ryan works as a software engineer. We’ve bought our first home and have since adopted three cats (Troy, Ivy and Sylvie) who we absolutely adore and spoil rotten. We got engaged just before Christmas 2022 and we had a fun, festival-style wedding in June 2023. We were so excited that Helen Sharples, one of our Foundation Year tutors from York, was one of our guests!
Thank you to all of the alumni couples who submitted their stories to us – we’ve loved hearing about how you met and how far you’ve come together! If you haven’t seen yours yet, don’t worry we continue to publish love stories throughout the year. If you’d like to have your own love story featured, please fill in this form.
Keep up with more love stories over the coming weeks on our @UoYAlumni Instagram and Facebook pages.
