A Sweet Treat

A 50-year love story started at Willard Hall

Samuel Ballam ’74 MBA and Susan Ballam ’75

We met by random chance in May 1973 when we sat opposite each other in the dining room at Willard Hall. I was a first-year MBA student majoring in finance, while Susan was an undergrad majoring in history. Within a few days we were seeing each other on an almost-daily basis. Our first date was a bike ride pedaling north of campus up to Wilmette.

After a summer as an intern in Pittsburgh, I visited Susan’s family in Montana in September 1973. We returned to campus together and were inseparable during the 1973–74 academic year. We became engaged in June 1974 and were married in the Jeanne Vail Chapel on campus on March 29, 1975.

Our married life began in Honolulu, where we lived and worked from 1975 to 1979. While there, I was president of the Northwestern Alumni Club of Hawaii. Since 1979 we have lived in suburban Philadelphia, where we raised three sons. Our eldest son, David [’08 MMus], earned his master’s degree in music at Northwestern. We recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary along with our sons and six grandchildren. We now enjoy retired life after a full business career and raising a family.

— Sam Ballam ’74 MBA

SHARED LAUGHS AT PHONATHON LED TO ROMANCE Michelle Coussens ’85 and Randy Coussens ’86

We met as undergrads in the summer of 1984 while working for the Northwestern Alumni Association. We both made calls as part of the alumni Phonathon. After happening to sit next to each other one night (making each other laugh during calls), I rigged the seating chart so we ended up next to each other every night of work. 

Randy eventually caught on, and we dated thereafter. We graduated in 1985 and 1986, bought a townhouse together in 1987, got married in 1988 and had our first future Northwestern student in 1990, followed by two more children in 1992 and 1994. Our two daughters [Ashley ’12 and Darcy ’14] each graduated from Northwestern with theater degrees. 

After raising our kids in Chicago’s western suburbs, we moved to the city almost 13 years ago. We live in the Edgewater neighborhood and get to Evanston often. We keep in touch almost daily with various treasured Northwestern friends. We also routinely tailgate before football games with a crew of college buddies and feel very lucky to have met when and where we did. And Randy's birthday is on Valentine’s Day, so this celebratory holiday is doubly sweet!

— Michelle Coussens ’85

SHE FELL FOR HIM ... AND WILDCAT BASKETBALL 

Kyle Okimoto ’89 and Stacy Kim ’90 

THEY FOUND LOVE AT THE PLEX Graham LippSmith ’99 and MaryBeth LippSmith ’99

In the fall of 1995, the Northwestern football team had just embarked on its Cinderella season when another fairy tale was brewing — of all places — in the Plex. 
 
The way Graham tells it, he saw me from the top of the bleachers as I came into Patten Gym for orientation and thought to himself, “I am going to meet that girl.” That night, we met on the fourth floor of Foster-Walker Complex, where we lived a few doors from one another. 
 
The way I tell it, Graham and I became close friends that first quarter, but everything changed when he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and things were looking dicey. That’s when I realized that our friendship might really be a romance. 
 
When we finally got together, we promised that if we grew up, stayed together and had a baby boy, we’d name him Foster. We shook on it by The Rock. In the fall of 2025, 30 years later, Foster moved into 717 University Place; he receives his mail at the Plex. While at Northwestern, we never missed a football game and went to one with Foster during Family Weekend!

— MaryBeth LippSmith ’99

IT ALL BEGAN WITH ‘PURE MICHIGAN’ Nitesh Srivastava ’07 and Stacy Srivastava ’07, ’09 MA

I lived on North Campus and she in the sorority quad, and we came across a courtyard as seniors in the apartments near Ridge and Simpson. We had little to discuss: My fridge was in the living room, and my roommates were setting fire to the coffee table when they weren’t throwing steak knives into the ceiling fan. Our friends began dating, the old chestnut, and one terrible winter morning I heard a radio ad for a wonderland called “Pure Michigan.” 

She was from there. 

I was from Eagle River, Alaska, and had a tight five about Midwestern winters being worse. 

I saw a magazine spread for Traverse City, Mich., and texted her, “Isn’t this where you’re from?” We went with our friends to Chicago’s Grant Park on election night in 2008. Our friends broke up. 

My parents knew before I did; I flew her to Alaska for chrissakes. She was a teacher, my family’s business.

The uncs and aunties in India relished a white-dress American wedding to a woman who, in their words, “looks like Barbie.” We’ll table that for later. Her father made a coffee table that sits in our living room, graffitied in crayon. 

— Nitesh Srivastava ’07

A BOND FUELED BY BURRITOS AND GOOD FRIENDS Andrew Choi ’19, ’19 CERT and Mallika Choi Bhandari ’19

Andrew and I met on Deering Meadow in the Fall of 2015, moments into freshman year. 

Our Northwestern memories together consist of braving the North to South Campus walks in the dead of winter, late-night study sessions and of course, lots and lots of al pastor Tomate burritos. We grew up and grew alongside each other in Evanston.

Since we graduated in 2019, we have lived on the East Coast, in the Midwest and now on the West Coast. In every chapter, our Northwestern friends have been a constant, forming the community that has held us close, no matter where we landed or what we were tackling in life.

This year we celebrated our wedding alongside the Goan coast in India, with over 100 college friends traveling across the world to be with us.

A decade after we first met, our memories of Northwestern remain some of our most special — not only because we fell in love with each other but also because of all those we found who bring so much love into our lives every day.

— Mallika Bhandari ’19