Michael Veley, professor and director of the Department of Sport Management  

+ Kate Veley, manager of career center and event planning in the Department of Sport Management

On their honeymoon in Hawaii, the couple asked a native sculptor to craft a wooden sculpture symbolizing the resounding themes of their relationship. Some included comfort, togetherness and laughter.

‘There was laughter from the beginning,’ Kate Veley said.

Advisers for the Syracuse University Sports Management Club charity work, the pair ended their 12-hour workdays with dinner and drinks. The professional relationship quickly blossomed into a romantic one, and they married on Oct. 30 2010. Kate Veley still feels she’s in the newlywed stage.

‘I’m going to milk it for as long as I can.’

The Pitch —A traditionalist, Veley asked Kate Veley’s father for her hand in marriage before whisking her off to Captiva Island in Florida on May 29, 2010. The couple strolled through their special spot at night before Veley popped the question.

MV: I actually contacted the U.S. weather service because I didn’t want to be out on the beach in complete darkness with this ring in my hand, nervously shaking with the thought of dropping it in the sand. I wanted a full moon. Lo and behold, I worked out the whole vacation around the moon, and it’s sunny all the time except this night. The clouds roll in, the moon is covered up, but I had to do it this day because I couldn’t wait any longer.

KV: Then he proposed and I immediately dropped to my knees, too, because I was afraid he was going to drop the ring. So we’re both on our knees by the edge of the water, very focused on what we were saying, but watching that the ring didn’t end up in the middle of the ocean. It was wacky.

MV: Even though we’re older we were acting like young teenagers. This location was very special for us. I wanted to make that night something Kate would remember forever.

Grand Slam— The reception at the couple’s wedding featured a popcorn maker, chocolate baseballs at all the tables and a caricature by cartoonist Joe Glisson that guests signed. Kate Veley had a surprise in store for her sports-crazed fiancé, who greets hundreds of SU fans as public address announcer as they enter the Dome.

KV: I was expecting to be nervous. I remember sitting in the limousine thinking, ‘Now my nerves are going to kick in,’ but I wasn’t. I knew I was exactly where I wanted to be, without a shadow of a doubt in my mind.

MV: I was at the altar. And I’m waiting for the organist to start the ‘Here Comes the Bride’ procession and instead, over the speakers I hear Kate’s voice. This is going to sound crazy or eerie, but it sounded like a voice from heaven. She had recorded this beautiful message to me before she walked down the aisle to let me know how much she loved me. I stood there in a church full of family and our closest friends, trying to stay composed and not become emotional. It was the most powerful thing that’s ever happened to me. You always hear the expression ‘expect the unexpected,’ but I could never expect this unexpectedness. I was overwhelmed because it was from my best friend, my soul mate and the person that I loved. To have somebody go to that length and effort to make my day special is something I’ll always take with me for the rest of my life.

Robert Rubinstein, professor of anthropology and international relations

+ Sandra Lane, professor of public health

Every morning, Rubinstein brews coffee ground with cardamom and delivers it in a blue cup for his wife of 24 years.

‘On Saturdays, sometimes he brings a second cup,’ she said.

Vibrant mosaic artwork and eclectic furniture fill the couple’s Jamesville home.They lived in Egypt for the first five years of their marriage, eventually landing positions at SU.They share a fierce dedication to students, once opening their home for two months to a student in need.

‘We’re kind of like old hippies,’ Lane said. ‘But it’s nice having a partner to share similar value systems to you.’

Friendly encounter — In November 1987, both Rubinstein and Lane attended anthropology meetings for scholars in Chicago. A mutual colleague, Lane’s professor at University of California in San Francisco, suggested they meet.

RR: We spoke on the phone, and we arranged to meet for lunch. The meetings have thousands of people, so we described what we would be wearing, and I knew what colors she would be in. At the meetings, all these book publishers come and display their books. We were going to meet at 1 o’clock, and as I was waiting for that time to come around, I was in the book exhibit. I looked down one aisle of Yale University Press, and there was this beautiful blond woman wearing red with a gray shirt, and I thought, ‘That must be she.’ And it was.

SL: We saw each other every day at the meetings. The third day, we were walking to dinner at this restaurant, and I held my arm in his arm. It was icy and cold, and I was wearing high heels, so I was holding onto him. And I felt this sense that I was going to marry him, that he was the right one. It was a physical feeling of comfort

Twice as nice— The pair married twice. First in a civil ceremony on Aug. 5, 1988, before moving to Egypt and then a more traditional ceremony on Nov. 13, 1988, the day before they attended an anthropology meeting — their honeymoon, Lane said, laughing. ‘So I make him buy me presents two times.’

SL: We were married by Margaret O’Malley in the basement of the Civic Center in Chicago. Robert was making jokes, and the lady looked at me like, ‘Are you sure you want to marry him?’

RR: I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. It was the summer.

SL: And I was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt.

RR: The divorce court was on the 12^th floor with an incredible view of Chicago, so the first thing I said when we walked into her office was, ‘Why is the divorce court upstairs and you get married in the basement?’ And I saw her desk and she had the marriage ceremony transliterated in various languages. So I asked her, ‘Can you marry us in Vietnamese?’

SL: That’s when she looked at me and said, ‘You sure you want to marry this guy?

RR: She said, ‘This is a brief but binding ceremony.’

David Yaffe, assistant professor of English

+ Amy Leal, instructor in the English department

A picture in a Sarah Lawrence College catalog shows Leal and Yaffe sitting next to each other in their modern philosophy class. The two had never met or spoken. A year later, the couple was inseparable, often sharing a mug of black coffee in their 17^th-century literature class.

‘Someone called us the dynamic duo,’ Yaffe recalled.

After graduation, the two pursued degrees at the City University of New York Graduate Center before making their way to SU.The jazz enthusiast frequently plays piano for Leal and their 2-year-old son, Julian.

‘He makes my life a musical,’ Leal said, smiling.

In Sync— Yaffe, who frequently left campus for a New York City internship, once discovered flowers on his dorm room door. ‘What I didn’t know was that she left flowers on everybody’s door,’ he said. ‘But because I was never around very often, I was the only one with flowers left so that made me feel I had the right to talk to her.’ That summer, the two became best friends, and their relationship gradually developing into a romantic one.

AL: He made me a mixtape.

DY: It was called ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience.’ It’s important to note that Amy has read absolutely everything, or at least everything worth reading. So I was in awe of how much literature she had accumulated. I had never met another student who had read a fraction of what she read, so I knew she would appreciate any literary reference. On the innocence side, I had ‘Nothing Like You’ sung by Bob Durough on a Miles Davis album, Bill Evans’ ‘Waltz for Debby,’ the Beatles’ ‘If I Fell’ and a nocturne by Debussy. On the experience side, there was ‘Fixin’ to Die’ by Bukka White, and it might have had a Nirvana song.

AL: It was so wonderfully grim, so of course I was delighted. And I read into it of course.

DY: And what she read was correct. So when this transition came from us being friends to becoming more than friends, she knocked on my door and I was on the phone with the person I had been involved with. I said, ‘Shh,’ and she said real quietly, ‘I’m trapped in a Tennyson poem.’ I couldn’t wait to get off the phone. And that was Feb. 12, close to Valentine’s Day. We became pretty much joined at the hip.

I thee wed —One day in 1995, when the pair was living in a small New York City apartment, Leal told Yaffe she dreamed they got married. ‘I asked, June 15, ‘Would you like to do that for real?’ And that was the proposal.’ The couple married seven years later on June 15, 2002.

DY: I was teaching at Sarah Lawrence and thought, ‘Aha, I could capitalize on this.’ I got the publishing office to print out our wedding invitation. There was a picture of us taken on our graduation day, and we made the whole thing look like a book — ‘A Wedding’ by Amy Leal and David Yaffe. It had a version of a quote from Harold Bloom on it: ‘You’ve done better than any man of your generation.’ And Amy made her own wedding dress.

AL: It was silver. I make historical clothes for a hobby, so I made a hodgepodge of different styles. Instead of having numbers for tables, we had a literary or musical theme.

DY: We had an Elvis table, a Byron table and a Beatles table. It was at a beautiful part of campus, by the music building with a beautiful view of the woods. This great jazz singer, Paula West, sang for us as we walked down the aisle, and one of the best jazz piano players around, Bill Charlap, played. We walked to ‘Our Love is Here to Stay’ by George and Ira Gershwin. We did it exactly the way we wanted to do it. 

Published on February 13, 2012 at 12:00 pm