Happy Valentine's Day 2025, Vikings!
Thank you to everyone who shared their stories of friendships formed and true loves found on campus. We delight in this tradition. So, let's get started!
Kari Doherty and Catrina Avalon
Catrina and I met during orientation for our MBA program. I noticed her cute haircut and Dr. Martens and immediately knew I wanted to be friends with her. During our first term, we were divided into random groups for our accounting class. Catrina and I ended up in the same group.. Our strengths complement each other’s and we had so much fun working together. We’ve worked on so many projects together now, including taking a trip with the MBA program to Chile and Argentina. Many of our fellow travel mates had roommate issues, but not us. We laughed together everyday. Catrina is my bestie and there are times when I can’t imagine getting through this challenging academic program without her.
Joleen and Carlos Mena
We met in 2018 when Carlos came to interview for a faculty position but it wasn’t until 2022, when we worked together on a committee, that things started to blossom. Soon, he began stopping by my office just to say “hi” and, after a work event, he confessed in parking garage #1 that he was smitten with me. A few months later, we shared our first kiss in the Park Blocks, followed by one of our first official dates at the farmers market. Our love story came full circle when we married in June 2024, surrounded by love and laughter, and a bunch of our PSU colleagues. ❤️
Yamini Singh and the International Student Mentor Program
I met the international coordinators when applying for the program back in February 2024. Later, during training in the spring term 2024, I had the chance to work with them in person. The mentoring program really helped me build connections as an international student at PSU. I got knowledge about the community, and what to expect. The class training made me feel more confident as an international student. The program also helped me connect as a mentor with other international students, which made me help new students in navigating the campus environment. It gave me a strong support system and made me feel like part of the PSU community right from the start. Last but not the least, I want to dedicate a heartfelt thank you to Csendi Hopp, Yoko Honda, Ryan Fung, Alyssa Koida and Kristi Kang. Your unwavering support and dedication have truly made a difference in my journey. The care and effort you've put into helping international students like me feel at home is something I will always appreciate.
Melissa and Michael Endicott
We met on the film committee on campus! We were (and still are) both passionate about movies, and joining the committee was a great way to get involved. Michael was a longtime member of the film committee — which runs PSU’s 5th Avenue Cinema — and it was by sheer accident that I learned about it and joined. I just had my 30th anniversary with PSU in October, and Michael and I will be celebrating our 30-year wedding anniversary this May!
Wisper Pilling and Kaden Chanthanlangsy
Kaden and I met at the freshman first-day thing, where they make you play games and make friends if you live in the dorms. We got paired up to make a secret handshake and have been inseparable since. We are now engaged and planning our wedding! He proposed to me on the PSU campus, so I figured this was fitting for a PSU love story.
Hasol Yu and Matt F.
Matt and I met on a dating app and had no mutual friends, but funnily enough both have connections to Portland State. I graduated in 2022, and he worked for the Institute for Natural Resources at PSU. One of our first conversations was about La Casita on campus! We've done a fair bit of traveling and relocated for Matt's grad school program, but Portland is a special place for both of us.
Hasol Yu and Halle Jackson
Halle and I met at Tennis Club when I was a freshman! She was club president and I came to tryouts a week late. What started out as practice twice a week went on to trips to local tournaments and even traveling to Orlando for a spring invitational. Today, almost 7 years later, Halle and I still talk every day about everything (including tennis). She's my best friend, gym buddy, role model and I'm so glad Portland State Tennis Club brought us together.
Elizabeth Velador and Juan Garcia
When I started at PSU, I did not know many people. One of my friends invited me to a study session at the campus library and had mentioned her friend would be joining us. That was when I first met Juan, my now boyfriend of 3 years. On the same day we met, we ended up at an event in La Casa Latina at Smith Union. At the event, I introduced him to many friends who we also made vision boards. Later that week, he asked me to join him at a concert — which I did not realize was a date — to see a very famous Mexican band, Banda MS. Days later on campus, he asked me to be his girlfriend and we have been together since. This was back in 2021 when we were both freshmen at PSU . Together, we were able to help each other learn what we really wanted to do for our major and met lifelong friends that helped us grow. We are both seniors now getting ready to graduate this spring and starting to plan our wedding.
Isabella Starr, Isabella Esparza-Clark, & Kai Hosea
I met Isabella at orientation right before my first year here. She approached me while I was sitting at a bench outside and we started talking. We realized really quickly that we had similar interests and even the same name, and continued talking over the summer. I’m so grateful to have her in my life, and I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed college nearly as much without her. Kai was my roommate freshman year, and we also clicked immediately. It was my first time living downtown, and their first time living in Portland (and Oregon in general). I remember we used to link arms and buddy-system our way to get groceries or go somewhere, and we also went to our first party together! I’m really glad that Kai and Isabella ended up clicking together, and I love the little trio we’ve formed over the years.
Ryan and Jinyi Voelker
My life changed one day in 2013 when I was a news writer for the PSU Vanguard. I went out to interview a student at Millar Library for a story, and the randomly assigned photographer was this quirky girl from China named Jinyi. She was funny and cute but I never would have thought 12 years later we'd be married for more than a decade, have three amazing kids and an absolutely beautiful life together. I love our story of how we came together. Without PSU and our time at the Vanguard, it very likely would not have happened.
Mary Carol and Tom Day
Fifty three years of true love began for my husband and me at PSU in 1970. Having graduated in 1969, I was teaching at Cleveland High School in Portland while taking night classes as I pursued my Masters Degree in Education. One Friday night after Dr. Lill’s Walt Whitman class, I met a friend who suggested we drop in The Cheerful Tortoise, where we joined mutual friends for beers, bowls of popcorn and those mouth watering roast beef sandwiches. I sat down next to this handsome guy who sported an impressive mustache and longish blond hair. Tom had just recently returned from Vietnam, and he was using the GI Bill to complete his college education at PSU. As we talked, I found out that he had grown up in SE Portland and that he had graduated from Cleveland High School. The night ended with Tom saying, “Maybe I’ll come by the old school sometime.” Well, much to my surprise and delight, the following Tuesday when I returned to my classroom after lunch, who should be standing by the door but Tom. And I just knew that he hadn’t really come to see his old high school! And so began our true-love journey that started and continued at PSU: taking night classes, studying together in the library, proofreading our term papers and then typing them on an old Royal typewriter, riding our three-speed Schwinn bikes down Montgomery Street from our apartment to attend summer classes, sitting together in the Park Blocks and dropping by The Cheerful Tortoise where beers, popcorn and sandwiches awaited us. We are now both happily retired from our careers as teachers, but some of our fondest memories take us back to those days where our love began at PSU.
Natalie Sowell and Kayden Ward
Kayden and I actually met in community college, but my dream was to transfer and attend PSU. He believed in me so much, helping me apply and stay on top of my credits to transfer. Instead of moving up to Portland alone, he decided to follow me and support my dream. I graduated this last spring of 2024, and this April will be our 5th Anniversary. Even though we didn’t meet on campus, he was there every step of the way — literally, as he would walk me to and from class as often as possible. Also, staying up with me while I wrote final papers, hyping me up before presentations and helping me make ends meet. He says I could’ve done it without him, and this is probably true, but he will truly never understand the support and confidence he gave me!
Charley and Cathy Rowland
In 1976, I was attending PSU on the Vietnam Veterans tuition program. I was in my senior year and, as one of many part time jobs, I was the retiring manager of the PSU Outdoor Program.
At a planning meeting for an upcoming outing, we all were sitting around the edges of the Outdoor Program's large "closet" office. I passed around a yellow ruled sign-up pad for the topic at hand. We were making decisions and detailed plans for a week-long Spring Break kayak trip around the San Juan Islands. There were a number of questions, but one woman asked an extraordinary number of particularly detailed questions. The meeting wrapped up with most of the attendees satisfied with what they'd learned about the outing plans.
As I was to be the outing leader, I took the list of names, addresses and phone numbers and headed home to my rented garage room. It turned out that not only was this woman, Cathy, interesting to me in her questioning as to my leadership competency, but it turned out she lived only three blocks from me! So I made arrangements with her later that week to discuss more kayaking and camping details.
Over the next four weeks, the kayaking group planned long and hard for this trip. We had our gear organized, food lists made, school kayaks refurbished and we were getting close to the departure date. Also, I had recently purchased a 17-foot varnished mahogany racing sailboat called a Thistle and I suggested to Cathy that she join me in taking my sailboat to the San Juan Islands along with the kayaks. It turned out that kind of racing sailboat is completely unsuited for camping and sailing in windy island areas, but that is another story....
As it happened, I received an immediate job offer to become a Credit and Collections Manager for a Portland firm with an office in San Francisco. So I took Cathy to the beach for a “surprise” weekend and enlisted my mother to help me break the news to Cathy that I was making other plans right away and would be unable to go on the kayak trip. You guessed it — Cathy was secretly relieved that she was not going to have to share the curved bottom of a narrow racing sailboat and tent with an apparently unreliable person she barely had met just weeks earlier!
My new job in San Francisco was interesting but it did not last into its fourth month as that is a really rotten kind of career — clawing back money from people who don't intend to pay! Cathy did drive down to SF for a visit, presumably to verify that I actually was there, and that I knew how to hold down a job!
I moved back to the Portland area and continued my relationship with Cathy. We both graduated PSU in December of 1976, were married right before Christmas of 1978, adopted an infant son from China in 1997, had successful careers and retired from working in 2015, celebrated our son's wedding last summer and just marked our 46th wedding anniversary. What great luck I have had with Cathy helping to keep us all upright and tacking successfully into whatever the future holds.
Anant Pathak and Payal Deora
In the fall of 2019, I embarked on a journey from New Delhi to Portland. It was a lengthy 33-hour flight, but along the way, I met another incoming Master's student from PSU. Our initial conversation, sparked by the excitement of moving to a new country, laid the foundation for a connection that would grow stronger over time.
Once we settled on the beautiful PSU campus, the magic truly began. The campus, with its serene park blocks and vibrant community, became our playground. We would walk from one block to another for our classes, often losing track of time as we wandered around the park blocks or strolled along the waterfront. These walks turned into moments of shared laughter, deep conversations and an undeniable bond.
We attended classes together, brainstorming solutions to complex problems and challenging each other to think beyond the ordinary. These academic pursuits, coupled with our long walks and culinary adventures at student-friendly eateries nearby, created a perfect blend of intellectual and emotional connection. Every shared meal, every walk and every late-night study session brought us closer.
By November 2023, our bond had blossomed into something beautiful and enduring. We decided to get married, making our love story official. PSU will forever hold a special place in our hearts, not just for the education it provided, but for the community of friends we made and the memories we created. The campus will always be a symbol of our journey together, from that first flight to a lifetime of shared dreams and adventures.