Guest Writer What started with a small Spanish seminar in 2008 turned into a relationship that’s taken Katie and Craig from nights out in York to living together in Spain, running a business side by side and getting married in 2022. Nearly twenty years after first meeting at York, the university still plays a special part in their story – right down to the college-themed tables at their wedding.
“I actually started out studying English Literature before switching to Linguistics. When I mentioned I had an A-Level in Spanish, they put me on the Spanish course too. It was the very first year York offered Spanish as a degree course in 2008, so the classes were tiny.
I still remember walking into one seminar with only seven other students – and Craig says that’s the moment he noticed me.
Because the classes were so small, the Spanish Society socials felt really close-knit too. They weren’t huge nights out, so before long the two of us were heading into town together and really hit it off. Craig introduced me to all his friends in Vanbrugh, and from there we were inseparable, even spending a year living together in Santiago de Compostela in Spain while studying abroad.
After graduation, we spent some time apart, but somehow both ended up back in York for work.
Craig proposed in 2016, we bought our first house together in 2017, and by 2018 our little family had grown with the arrival of our first fur baby, Fonzie the cat. Elf joined the family in 2021. That same year, Craig officially joined the business I’d started back in 2016, Katie Lingo, so now we run it together.
We got married in October 2022 and have packed plenty of adventures into our relationship along the way — from road-tripping across America in 2012 to running the York Marathon together in 2024. And in a final nod to where it all began, we named all the tables at our wedding after York colleges.”
