When Elizabeth A. Cook ’10 organized a movie night for the Harvard Undergraduate Fellowship, a Christian student organization, she was hoping that fellow member Samuel D. Stuntz ’10 would attend. Not only did he show up, he was the only person who did.
So the pair watched “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” alone. They later realized that the film was one of the few movies that Cook, an anime aficionado, and Stuntz, an aspiring screeenwriter and Quentin Tarantino admirer, could both appreciate.
Cook and Stuntz began to date shortly thereafter, in February of their freshman year. They grew close after discovering that they shared a favorite childhood radio program, “Adventures in Odyssey.” “Sam went to Radio Shack to purchase a tape player to listen to old cassettes of the show,” Cook said. “I knew then he must like me.”
Friend Moonlit M. Wang ’10 characterized Cook and Stuntz as the ideal couple. “When we play Cranium, we always separate them into different groups because when they are in the same group, they get each other as if they have telepathic powers,” she said.
Though they had broached the subject of marriage earlier in their relationship, it was not until the beginning of their senior year that Stuntz proposed.
“It wasn’t out of the blue, but I had to wait until she finished the GREs,” Stuntz said. “I waited until the day after.”
Stuntz created a list of reasons why he wanted to marry Cook—one reason for each month that they had been dating, as the couple celebrates each “monthiversary.” After reading reason number three, Stuntz asked Cook to marry him. She said “yes,” and then waited a few days before telling Stuntz that he had miscounted the number of months they had been together.
“I do think they are a perfect match, because Liz is a very strong woman, and he lets her be that,” said Cook’s sister, Catherine D. Cook ’12. “Instead of her taking his last name, they are both changing their last names.”
The couple will be married at Christ the King Church in Central Square on May 30. After their wedding, they will serve as proctors for the Harvard Summer School until Cook, an applied math concentrator, starts the Business Economics Ph.D. program at Harvard Business School in the fall.
“We joke that we’re getting married and then adopting twenty high school-aged kids,” Cook said. “But we figured this would be easier than finding an apartment on top of thesis, grad school, and marriage.”
—ARIANNA MARKEL
Read more in News
Wedding: Alexander J. Ahmed ’10 and Rebecca J. Morton