Claire C. Swadling ’26 and Benjamin duPont ’24

When he first met Claire C. Swadling ’26, Benjamin duPont ’24 tried out a corny pick-up line: “If pi is infinite, then it must have every possible set of numbers in it. So, where’s yours?”

Claire and Ben met on Hinge in the spring of 2023 and had their first date at Faro Cafe. Claire remembers thinking that Ben was exactly like his Hinge profile. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna meet some nerdy physics major,’ and everything that he said afterwards followed suit,” she says. There was some awkwardness between them, but they liked each other enough to go on a second date.

Soon, they were seeing each other on campus every day. The two Physics concentrators often worked together in the Dunster House dining hall — “sometimes successfully, sometimes less successfully,” according to Claire. They had a similar sense of humor: Once, in that dining hall, they decided to play rap music over Professor Joseph K. Blitzstein’s recorded statistics lectures. “We would experiment with doing that to different lectures and see how intense we could make it sound,” Claire says.

A year into their relationship, the couple knew that they were serious with each other. “I couldn’t imagine my life with anyone else,” Ben says. He moved to England for a master’s degree after graduation. He completed his coursework while simultaneously working a side job and applying for admission to doctoral programs in the United States. He and Claire called every day. “The last hour of my day was basically talking to Claire, and it was something to look forward to that got me through what were sometimes quite long days,” he says.

“I missed her dearly, and I realized that, if I missed her this much, that must indicate something — how big of a part of my life Claire was,” he says.

This past November, Ben proposed to Claire at the Lion Country Safari, a zoo in south Florida. He had planned to propose in front of the tortoises — a symbol of longevity — only to find that the tortoises were the first exhibit in the zoo. They spent an hour going through the whole safari. At the end, Ben told Claire that he didn’t feel that they’d gotten their money’s worth. He asked to go a second time.

When they passed the tortoises again, he proposed.

“I was suspicious that I was there, and I pretty much knew right before it was going to happen, but I don’t think it took away from the moment,” Claire says. “It was still really sweet.”

The couple took their engagement photos at the safari’s giraffe feeding station. “I was always amazed by how fast the giraffe lost interest in us when we didn’t have lettuce in our hands,” Ben says.

Claire and Ben are still in the early stages of wedding planning, but they intend to marry in Delaware, near Ben’s home. They hope to move in together after their wedding.

Now, Ben laughs as he remembers his initial pick-up line. “The irony is that it doesn’t even mathematically hold,” he says, laughing. “It doesn’t necessarily need to have every possible set of numbers.”

“But, you know, many dates later we ended up​​ getting engaged,” he says.

Tyler N. Nilson ’26 and Miri G. Nilson (née Griffin)

When Tyler N. Nilson ’26 and Miri Griffin first met, they were on opposing teams. The two were both at a volleyball night hosted by the local Church of Latter Day Saints, soon after returning from missions abroad — Tyler in Argentina, and Miri in Northern Spain.

Tyler saw Miri, who attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from the other side of the court. “I thought she was cute, I introduced myself,” Tyler says. He asked her on a date about two months later; they went to the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra’s formal ball, where they learned how to foxtrot and waltz.

They spent the summer of 2024 together in Cambridge, kayaking in the Charles and swimming together at Harvard’s pools in the morning. (Miri is on the swim team at MIT.) By the next summer, they were planning their August wedding in a Newport Beach temple and honeymoon to Los Cabos.

Tyler had planned out a Boston day for the proposal — an afternoon spent at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, then a walk along the Emerald Necklace where a friend was waiting with a camera. After Miri said yes, she immediately wanted to call her sister, a Harvard alumna who had also gotten married her senior year.

But a FaceTime would ruin Tyler’s second surprise: Miri’s sister was waiting for them at a restaurant in Back Bay. He made up a lie to keep Miri from calling, and pretended they were still meeting friends at a bookstore.

“Instead of turning right into the bookstore, I turn left and just walk into this restaurant with her, and Miri’s super confused, like ‘What the heck? Why are we in this restaurant?’” Tyler recalls. “And her sister and brother-in-law are there, and they have a table for us, they’re cheering.”

The couple moved in together to an MIT apartment, in the university’s designated family housing. While Miri and Tyler both say that some elements of marriage aren’t always compatible with undergraduate life — such as meal plans or Harvard’s housing system — they wouldn’t change a thing.

“I feel so much more grounded,” Miri says. “When I go home, I don’t feel like I’m still stuck on campus.”

As the two planned for their postgraduate life, marriage allowed them to collaboratively approach major life decisions. After graduation, they’ll be moving to San Francisco and working at the same healthcare life sciences advisory firm.

“I’ve learned so much from being married to Tyler about teamwork and collaboration and about working together that I just would not have learned before. It’s been really a privilege,” Miri says.

When Tyler reflects on their marriage, he recalls a speech that Dean of Harvard College David J. Deming once gave at the Kirkland holiday dinner, the same month he met Miri. Deming talked about the difference between resume virtues — internships, courses, and everything else the typical Harvard student tries to pursue — and eulogy virtues. For both Deming and Tyler, eulogy virtues like compassion, patience, and leadership are far more consequential, even if they are more difficult to measure.

Being married to Miri, Tyler says, has been “the most important factor” in developing his eulogy virtues. “I’m grateful that we have been able to focus on not just ourselves, but on each other, during our college experiences,” he adds.

C. McGowin Grinstead ’26 and Omar W. Wahby ’24

C. McGowin Grinstead ’26 and Omar W. Wahby ’24 met on vacation. They went on a weekend trip to Cape Cod with friends in September 2023, and they were the only people in the group who didn’t already know each other. Two weeks after the trip ended, they went on their first date.

Omar and McGowin quickly discovered that they shared an interest in music. They were both clarinetists —McGowin for her high school band, Omar for the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra. In late September, after one of their initial dates, Omar gave McGowin a ticket to the first HRO concert of the year. She had another concert to go to that night — but she decided to go see Omar perform instead.

“It was a very sweet experience of being able to see her after the concert and then to hang out afterwards,” Omar recalls.

That November, they took an Amtrak train down to Connecticut for Harvard-Yale. McGowin thinks of it as their first trip as a couple. “Omar bought a ticket and made it very easy for me to come along,” she says.

Omar was set to graduate that spring, and the couple thought carefully about whether they wanted their relationship to continue in the long term. “When I was going into my senior year, I didn’t have any expectation at all of getting into a relationship,” Omar says. He was primarily focused on making the most of his last year at Harvard. “The last thing I expected was meeting McGowin the first week of senior year, and then the whole year playing out the way it did.”

McGowin remembers coming to her decision at Omar’s last HRO concert. Watching him play from the audience, she realized that she wanted to stay together.

The summer after his graduation, Omar visited McGowin for the first time at her home in Mobile, Alabama. She took him to her favorite local beach, trading the freezing waves of the Atlantic for the warm waters of the Gulf Coast.

A year later, Omar returned to Mobile to propose.

They went out for a walk and ended up at a park near the Mobile Museum of Art. Omar proposed on a park bench overlooking a pond. “It was no pomp and circumstance, at least on my end,” Omar says. “I just got down on one knee and asked her.”

McGowin calls his timing perfect. “My parents already had dinner reservations that night, because it was the first weekend Omar was in town, so then we all got to go to dinner after and celebrate,” she says.

In a month, the couple will marry at St. Ignatius Parish, McGowin’s church in Mobile. They will have their reception at Fort Condé Inn, a historic hotel made up of 19th-century homes, in downtown Mobile.

“I am excited for a lot of Harvard people to come down and see Alabama for the first time,” McGowin says. “That’ll be exciting to have this blend of like home friends and college friends.”

McGowin hasn’t minded adding wedding planning to the other major responsibilities of senior year. “It’s nice to kind of end my time at Harvard feeling like I just ended a marathon,” she says. “The wedding makes graduation easier in a way — there’s so much to look forward to.”

Isaac R. Ohrenstein ’26 and Brooke L. Verschleiser

If someone told Brooke L. Verschleiser a year ago that she would be getting married this June, she wouldn’t have believed it. “I always said I’d date someone for at least a year before I got engaged,” she says.

But her expectations changed last year, when a friend sent her a text trying to set her up with Isaac R. Ohrenstein ’26. Brooke, who graduated from Brown last year and is heading to medical school in July, remembers thinking she didn’t have time for a date.

But with some convincing from friends, she decided to go. Six months later, Isaac proposed to her at a hotel bar in NoMad, Manhattan, close to the spot where they had their fateful first date.

“You meet someone, and you just know it’s right,” Brooke says. “At least that’s how I felt.” She points to two moments when she knew Isaac was the one: their second date — the harder date, in her opinion, because you have to put in more effort and the conversation gets more personal — and a family trip to New Zealand.

The first day, Brooke, her mother, and Isaac trekked for an hour and a half trying to find a black sand beach in remote New Zealand. When they finally found the beach, they spent the day with no service, just talking to each other. Isaac fit right into the family.

When the two first started talking about marriage, Brooke immediately went to her parents. “I had my original sentiment of, ‘this is crazy,’” Brooke says. But her parents gave their full support — they had known since the New Zealand trip that the pair would get married.

On paper, too, Brooke and Isaac were compatible: They are both from New York, Jewish and similarly religious, and motivated, but in their own fields. After graduation, Isaac is working in finance in New York, where the two will be living together.

“We’re almost starting this new chapter of life,” Isaac says. “We want to see our friends from college as much as possible, and want them to be part of our lives, and vice versa. We hope that we’re able to invite them for meals, and help them through their own dating processes.”

As Brooke prepares to start medical school, she is looking forward to going back home at the end of the day and “having the person that I always wanted in my corner, really being always there.”

The wedding is two weeks after graduation, on June 14. “Lots of friends from Harvard and Brown coming up,” Isaac says.

He offers some advice for anyone who may be afraid of making the commitment to marriage: Go for it. When you find the right person, “it makes your life better. It adds a lot of value in a myriad of ways that I think we’re only even now starting to appreciate.”