ou’ve just gotten off the shuttle — frozen hands, growling stomach. You hastily scan your Harvard ID and scurry into a renowned Quad sanctuary: the Cabot dining hall. The checkered-blue carpet is overrun with hungry Cabot residents. Bela, the pantry steward of Cabot, zips through the labyrinth of tables, pushing up her gold-rimmed glasses as her earrings sway side-to-side. Through the chaos of the dinner rush, however, the one thing that remains consistent is her smile.

As you approach the grill, you know only one thing can satiate your stomach’s demands — the famous Cabot Cajun fries. You see the french fry master himself, Chris. His shirt cuffs are pushed up to his elbows, revealing an electric guitar tattoo on each of his forearms. His baritone voice reverberates through the room as he asks you for your order.

While waiting for Chris’s signature dish, you smile and take in the fall foliage decorations draped along the counters. You don’t even notice it, but you’re bobbing your head to the music in the background. You feel at home.

This feeling is no coincidence. The ambience, decorations, fries, and warmth have been staples of the Cabot experience for decades. Behind it, a couple that has been together just as long: Bela and Chris Pappas.

When a Man Loves a Woman

It was 1985. Chris Pappas stood in line during the annual HUDS employee training seminar, glancing around the bustling room for people he knew. Then, he paused. A few paces ahead in line, he spotted a gorgeous young woman he had never seen before.

Over the next two years, Bela and Chris exchanged glances at the annual training seminars, but they didn’t speak until the summer of 1987 when Chris took a job at the same dining hall where Bela worked.

On his first day in the new dining hall, Chris looked for Bela to no avail. But on the second day, as Chris was walking out a swinging door, Bela just happened to be entering.

Chris recounts: “As I’m walking by, she walks by—”

“Oh, that’s the guy!” Bela interjects with her own moment of recognition.

After the romcom-esque meet-cute, they grew closer. Eventually, Chris mustered up the courage to ask her out to the beach. Despite being in her early twenties, Bela needed a cover story to make it past her strict Portuguese parents. “I told my mom it was my best friend’s birthday party,” Bela says.

That night, as they walked across the sand, Chris tried to take things slow. “I’m the kind of guy to just walk and talk, and kiss your hand goodnight, but she” — Chris gestures to Bela — she was asking “is this guy gonna kiss me or what?’”

Following that fateful night, the two began dating. After their shifts, Chris would sit at Bela’s kitchen table for hours before heading home. Still, they kept their relationship a secret at Harvard. “At work, it’s ‘Chris’ and ‘Bela,’ not ‘honey,’” Chris says. When they went together to a co-worker’s wedding, it spurred pleasant surprise amongst HUDS staff.

The post-work courtship and dining table conversations continued for five years. “By the fifth year,” Chris recalled, “I said, ‘I want to grow old with this person. I want to marry her.’”

And that, he did.

Christmas Eve, 1992. Chris opened a bottle of wine and slid in a cassette of “When a Man Loves a Woman” — a 1991 ballad of devotion that swells with disarming passion — into the player. As the music rose, Chris lowered himself to one knee. The couple recalls the moment as nothing short of perfect, their proposal falling into place right as the bridge crested. It felt inevitable and passionate — just like their relationship.

After a two-year engagement, Bela and Chris finally became Bela Pappas and Chris Pappas. They have now been married for 31 years and together for 38.

An Inflection Point

Though HUDS has been a major component of the couple’s lives, there was a time when Chris ventured out on his own.

In his early twenties, Chris won several bodybuilding titles. Though he quit the sport before getting married, the protein-heavy diet he once adhered to gave him creative snack ideas like “high-protein power muffins.”

In 1998, after 20 years of working the same job at Harvard, Chris decided “there’s gotta be something more to life.” He used his snack ideas to start his own restaurant: Lo Fat-No Fat Gourmet Cafe. Capitalizing on Y2K’s push for healthier eating, his restaurant sold items like non-fried french fries. People loved it.

“I was doing, by the third year, 2.2 million in sales in a 2000 square-foot place,” Chris says.

Business was booming, but something was missing. With Bela still working at Harvard and Chris managing three separate locations, they didn’t see each other much anymore. “When you own a restaurant or business, you always gotta keep your finger in the pot, so to speak,” Chris says. One night, after Chris got home late, the problem came to a head.

“She said to me, ‘Honey, I think it’s great that we’re making all this money, but I’m growing old alone,’” Chris recalls. “You have to listen to that and say, ‘Okay, so what’s more important?’”

Without batting an eye, he sold the restaurant. And after a six-year stint in a wholesale bakery, Chris came back to Harvard in 2014.

Harvard Heroes

Bela was 16 when she began working for HUDS, following in the footsteps of her father. “My father would come home with these stories about Harvard and the food and the students, and I was like ‘That’s the place I want to work,’” she says.

Between once working with her father and now with her husband, Bela has always seen Harvard as synonymous with family. But this family is bigger than one might expect: it includes every student she serves.

Bela describes the joy she gets when students loosen up to Chris’s playlist each evening. “They’re singing, they laugh — and that’s what we’re all about,” she says.

To both of them, food is an important part of their job, representing more than just daily sustenance. With food, Chris says, “you’re celebrating life.”

Bela has worked for HUDS for the last 45 years, and she is known for being a backbone of Harvard’s residential culture. In fact, in 2001 she was a recipient of the Harvard Heroes Recognition Award, an honor presented to staff “whose work supports the mission of Harvard at the highest levels of contribution, impact and excellence.”

Whether it be for Halloween, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day, one of Bela’s favorite activities is to beautify Cabot and Pfoho’s dining halls with seasonal adornments. In fact, Bela once won an art contest for one of her decorative creations. “I love when students walk in like, ‘Wow!’” Bela says. “That’s what I love to see in turning a dining hall into such a beautiful place.”

Bela’s artistry also extends to musical performances. Years ago, when the Cabot Musical rendition of Grease had a shortage of actors, Bela volunteered. Soon, she found herself on stage in a white tuxedo and painted mustache. Since then, the mustache has been a feature of a number of her performances. “That painted mustache went everywhere with me,” Bela wrote in a text message.

Going the Distance

One night 20 years ago, Chris and Bela were sitting on the sofa when Chris says Bela turned to him, saying “Honey, I’m getting older.” Chris looked back at her with excitement.

“I know, isn’t it beautiful? I love it,” he recalls asking in response, before comforting her. “Don’t worry. If it gets tired, I’ll carry you the rest of the way.’”

Fast forward two decades later, the love the two share seems to have only grown stronger.

But how have they had such a long and successful marriage?

“If each person can say to each other, ‘Nothing is more important to me than us’ — you’re good,” Chris says.

“And being good friends,” Bela adds. “I can go out and have a good time, you know, but it’s not the same,” she explains. “A lot of the girls say, ‘I want to go out, I want to leave my husband home.’ I actually don’t. I have fun with him.”

This Cabot couple has come a long way since their first moonlit kiss by the beach almost four decades ago. But having each other to lean on and appreciating the other person for who they are at their core has made it possible.

“At some point, Father Time will show his head and we will become older and the looks won’t always be there” Chris says. “It’s what’s inside that counts — that’s what goes the distance.”

— Magazine writer Charan S. Bala can be reached at [email protected].

— Magazine writer Christie E. Beckley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @cbeckley22.