Happy Friday Penn State! This week’s segment of love stories is sure to give you enough happy thoughts to have a fantastic weekend, because anything could happen during a weekend at Penn State. You could meet someone while watching the football game, much like one of this week’s couples did. Or perhaps you could simply hang out with one of your closest friends, and you never know what could come next. If you’re feeling really crazy, you could always take a romantic balloon ride!

Graduation year: Both in 2008

 Photo: Brett and Amanda McCormick

“There were so many occasions in which we should have met. We had several mutual friends and our friend groups intertwined. We studied the same major (Supply Chain and Information Systems). But somehow, we didn’t meet until the beginning of senior year, September 2007,” said the pair.

One September night, both Brett and Amanda’s friends decided to go to Players, now know as Indigo, as a joke. Brett was wearing a ridiculous outfit that included crazy corduroy pants with deer printed all over them. The, uh, interesting outfit choice sparked a conversation between the pair. When asked how they met, Amanda and Brett simply refer to their first meeting as that “fateful night at Indigo.”

After graduation, Brett was commissioned into the United States Marine Corps as a Second Lieutenant and reported to The Basic School (TBS) in Quantico, VA in October 2008. Shortly after graduation, Amanda was contacted by a recruiter for an internship in Princeton, NJ with Bristol Myers Squibb located 45 minutes from Brett’s parent’s house in Warrington, PA: the stars continued to align. Brett graduated from TBS and was sent to his first duty station in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Amanda temporarily moved back home after her internship ended.

But nothing could keep these two apart. During Arts Fest 2010, Brett and Amanda stayed in West Hall dorms as Penn State Alumni. Brett planned to propose to Amanda on a hot air balloon ride Friday evening; however, Mother Nature quite literally rained on his parade. Thankfully, Brett was able to swig a makeup balloon date, and the couple took to the sky the morning they were set to leave State College. As the balloon soared over State College, Brett popped the question! Now does that sound like a storybook proposal or what?

Two years, one deployment to Afghanistan, and countless flights traveling to see each other later, Amanda and Brett were married in Philadelphia on May 26, 2012. After the wedding, they drove cross country to Brett’s new duty station in Monterey, California, where Brett studied at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Defense Language Institute.

Current status: Brett and Amanda have been happily married for over three years, and thoroughly enjoy life on California’s central coast. In 2016, they are set to be moving to the Middle East!

 Photo: Brett and Amanda McCormick

“We met senior year at Ephrat’s apartment at Penn Towers. We each had a good mutual friend since freshman year (Jim Wright) but had never crossed paths ourselves. Senior year, I lived on the 8th floor, Jim on the 9th and Ephrat on the 10th of Penn Towers. Our first football game that year was an away game, so Ephrat and her roommates made a spaghetti dinner and each invited friends to come over and watch the game on TV. Jim was one of those friends, and asked if he could bring his buddies from freshman summer who lived on the 8th floor. I was one of those guys. We all started hanging around a lot together and soon we became a couple.” said Jason.

“We dated all of senior year. By the end of that year. Ephrat (a psychology major) had gotten a job at the Meadows Treatment Center in Boalsburg. I was a broadcast cable major, and was looking for internships. Ephrat’s friend had a connection at CNN, so I went there to pursue that and hopefully a future job. We had a long distance relationship for half a year, with Ephrat continuing at the Meadows post graduation and me living in Atlanta interning for CNN. In January 1993, Ephrat moved to Atlanta to be with me, and we have been there ever since,” said Jason.

They lived together until getting married in 1995 and both went to graduate school (Ephrat for an MSW and Jason for an MBA).They now have two daughters, ages 9 and 12.

Kayllie Wang and Doug Subosits

To submit your own story, fill out this form. And be sure to check out our previous Love Stories, parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven.