Miriam J. Greener '93 had quite a piece of news for her roommates when she returned from a summer program in Israel this fall--the same program where Kosowsky met his future wife. She had run into a distant relative of hers while visiting his family and had become engaged to him a few weeks later.

"We had met six years before, but we didn't think much of each other then," she says of her fiance, Gady Abramson. "The first day I met him [again], I called home and couldn't stop talking about how wonderful he was."

Greener says her friends were supportive but stunned. "I think a lot of people find it very hard to understand because a lot of people aren't in this type of situation and can't imagine it," she says.

Elva D. Diaz '93 met her intended even later--in September, when she ran into him at a party. But her future husband, Spencer C. Punter '93, wasn't exactly a stranger to her friends. In fact, he lived in her house, Quincy--in the room where the party had been held.

The couple plans on holding its reception in the Quincy Senior Common Room after a Cambridge City Hall wedding the day following graduation. Their honeymoon will consist of a two-week ride across the country to California, where Diaz will attend graduate school and Punter will work at an investment firm.

"I was never the marrying type--I always said I'd wait until I was 30," Diaz says. "It was a last-minute decision...We got engaged over spring break."

Carl T. Bergstrom '93 of Currier House didn't surprise his roommates a year and a half ago after winter break when he announced his engagement to Holly N. Lauwers. Bergstrom had met Lauwers, who just gradusted from Syracuse University, in ninth grade, and he had begun dating her two years later.

"We decided to go to separate colleges because we weren't sure the relationship was right," Bergstrom says. "It became quite obvious to us by late October of freshman year where it was going."

Bergstrom's blockmate, Steven C. Krause '93, says he had expected the announcement sooner or later. "It seemed like the right thing to do," he says. "I can't imagine getting married now--but I'm sure if I had a girlfriend I'd been dating for the last six years, I'd consider it."

Scott H. Podolsky '93 also met his girlfriend, Amy Shapiro, during his first year of high school. Podolsky and Shapiro, a recent graduate of Boston University, started dating the next year and got engaged a year ago last May.

"When I first came here, I wasn't sure, but I realized pretty quickly when I got up here," Podolsky says. "We realized we were both happy and felt really complete around each other."

Podolsky says he has enjoyed having a "safe haven" with Shapiro at BU, despite the distance. "I've gotten used to taking the T," he says.

John H. Cawley '93 met his fiancee even earlier than Bergstrom or Podolsky. Cawley and Dharma E. Bilotta went to grade school and most of high school together, both participating on the speech and debate team.

But after Bilotta transferred to a different high school, Cawley didn't see her again--until two years ago, when he bumped into her on a street corner in their hometown of Scranton, Pa.

Cawley proposed to Bilotta last month on the middle of one of the bridges over the Charles River. "We ran down to the river and I asked her at midnight," says Cawley (although Bilotta claims it was closer to 1:30 a.m.).