The club is a great place to fall in love By Jake Ten Pas
W
hen we asked for couples’ stories of how they met at MAC, the response was heartwarmingly overwhelming. The list was whittled down to six great tales of romance, running the gamut of ages, professions and interests, just like MAC as a whole. Grab someone you love, open a bottle of red wine, and raise a toast to the many inspiring couples who continue to make this club what it is today.
The “friend zone” is a myth. Don’t believe it? Ask Conor and Emily Arcuri.
Halfway through college, after hanging out over the summers, and continuing to stay in contact by Skype and text, the latent romance manifested itself when they decided to stop fighting the feeling and make it official. After five years of dating, they got married on the rooftop of Hotel Deluxe, facing MAC, with many of the coaches in attendance who’d detected the blossoming romance before Conor and Emily were fully aware of it. “I think we always kind of had a crush on each other, but we were swimming together and training together, so nothing really could happen,” Emily says. “I definitely think we needed time to mature and figure out our goals in life before dating. I was very immature in high school!”
When Emily joined MAC as an Athletic Member in high school, Conor was already entrenched in the community as a legacy member. Both were distance swimmers, and were paired as training partners on the club’s team.
Now, they’re like two lenses on the same pair of goggles. They continue to swim and participate in triathlon at MAC, and look forward to the Peacock Lane Run every year. They recently bought a house, filled it with their cats and sheltie, and work together to tick off items on their five-year plans.
“I knew no one on the team when I first joined,” Emily says. “When you train with someone, you become pretty close, fast friends, though.” Their relationship remained platonic throughout high school and the first half of college, or at least from their perspective.
Conor is a mechanical engineer, and Emily describes him as “very precise and exact and really into the details.” She works in marketing-communications for Intel, and says she’s definitely more of a big-picture kind of person.
“Everyone made fun of us, even our coaches,” she recalls. “We were like the old, married couple. We’d bicker and fight, but we were 16, so no one really thought anything of it. Or, I guess we didn’t!”
“It’s actually really funny,” she says. “I’m surrounded by engineers all the time, and then I come home to an engineer. He helps me understand where they’re coming from, and the finer details of the semiconductor industry, at least to a certain extent. I think that we mesh really well!” Continued on page 33
FEBRUARY 2019
| The Wınged M |
31
