Correction appendedWhen a friend of Reuben Wechsler '80 and Ellen Levine-Wechsler '80 arranged a meeting on Chapels Field to exchange chemistry notes toward the end of their junior year, the couple did not foresee the imminent rollercoaster ride their relationship would take that would to last for years to come.

"I saw a guy walking towards me that day at our proposed meeting time, and I looked into his dreamy brown eyes, introduced myself and asked him about borrowing the notes," Levine-Wechsler said in an e-mail to the Justice. "His entire response to me was, 'If I lend you the notes, you better return them back to me in perfect condition.' ... But, it actually blossomed into a very long, off-and-on-again relationship."

In 2001, 21 years after they left Brandeis, Wechsler and Levine-Wechsler got married.

According to Assistant Vice President of Alumni and University Relations Karen Engelbourg '79, Brandeis has a record of 2,162 alumni married to alumni. To put that in perspective, that's approximately equal to the entire current sophomore class plus the entire junior class plus one-seventh of the senior class-all married to each other.

Wechsler and Levine-Wechsler dated their entire senior year and then broke up during their first year at different graduate schools. Levine-Wechsler didn't hear from Wechsler again until several years after finishing graduate school. He occasionally checked in with her, once actually in person at Levine-Wechsler's parents' home in Fort Lauderdale soon after the birth of her first child.

"It was a joyous meeting," said Levine-Wechsler in her e-mail, "but I was already married, and now with a new baby."

Years passed before Wechsler called again. But this time, the circumstances were different.

"Reuben and I were both separated from our spouses, and we began a friendship all over again. Renewed, but different. I think we both grew into the people we always knew we'd one day become, and treasured this growth. We soon were both divorced, and went to our Brandeis 25th reunion together, now dating again (some of our former classmates thought still!) We explained to everyone that wonderful night . that our relationship [was] renewed, 25 years after we left Brandeis.

About a year later, we married. I left Florida with my two children, and moved north to Atlanta to live with Reuben and his two children."

Engelbourg, who married alumnus Donald Stewart '76 at the Faculty Club, mentioned several reasons why many alumni choose to tie the knot in the years after graduation.

"Being married to a fellow alum, I can certainly understand why so many Brandeis graduates get together," Engelbourg wrote in an e-mail to the Justice. "Brandeis is a small, intimate and very unique community. In some ways, it's very much like family. Many of us share common values and interests, and of course, share our university experience. The relationships we form here, whether during our undergraduate days or once we're alumni, are lifelong."

Engelbourg and Stewart are hardly alone in their choice to integrate Brandeis into their married lives. Prof. Shula Reinharz (SOC) met her husband, University President Jehuda Reinharz, in high school, and they both earned their doctoral degrees at Brandeis.

Shula Reinharz told the story in an e-mail to the Justice of her first encounter with her husband. As high school sweethearts, Shula and Jehuda met at ages 15 and 17, respectively. According to Shula, they met right after Jehuda moved to the United States from Germany. "His parents sent him to live with a relative in my town-River Edge, NJ-until they could find an apartment or house," Prof. Reinharz said.

"His arrival in my high school-River Dell Regional-caused quite a stir because there were almost no foreign students attending. I met him the first day he was in the school, in the cafeteria. I walked up to him and said to him in broken Hebrew (he knew no English at all) that I'd be happy to show him around. I knew (and perhaps he did too) that I had just met the person I would marry," Shula Reinharz said.

Six years later, President Reinharz and Prof. Reinharz married, moved to Boston, and became a Brandeis alumni couple when they both finished their Ph.D.s-hers in Sociology, his in modern Jewish history-here.

Even among the multitude of married alumni who don't hold official University titles, fascinating stories abound. Although Lewis Brooks '80 and Denise Brooks '84 were never actually students at Brandeis at the same time, Denise shared an anecdote about their meeting at Brandeis in an e-mail to the Justice.

"Lewis was 'famous' for the slideshows he showed before Friday night movies while he was a student," Denise said. "In May of 1983, Lewis came back to campus to show slideshows. At the time, I was the President of ProBo [short for Programming Board, now Student Events], and Lewis came into the office looking for an extension cord.

The rest really is history. Lewis proposed to me in February of my senior year. I ran weekly ProBo meetings on Monday nights. Lewis knew that and sent someone in with a message during one of the meetings and asked me to come to the International Lounge at a certain time, and that's where he proposed."

Dissatisfied with their New York hometown's choice of wedding venues, the two invited their friends and family back to Brandeis for a "destination wedding." The night before the wedding, they had a barbecue in Massell Quad. The next day, Lewis and Denise were married in the Berlin Chapel, followed by a reception in the Faculty Lounge.

As Engelbourg indicated, Brandeis seems conducive to forging special lifelong relationships. Many alumni expressed similar feelings about the love they found while at their alma mater.

Lisa Berman Hills '82, married to her fellow Politics major Matthew Hills '81, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, "The Brandeis undergraduate experience attracts students who are not only committed to academic excellence, but who also share common values and interests. A vibrant and engaged student body enables meaningful relationships to be easily formed."

Denise Brooks added, "We have a huge number of friends where the bride and the groom went to Brandeis. It does seem, in talking to friends at work and where we live, that Brandeis' incidence of this kind of thing is high."

Levine-Wechsler agreed. "The best part about [my relationship with my husband] is that we both have so many of the same memories about college and friends. I guess you can say that for me, Brandeis was not just a life-turning event, it was a life-long event."

CORRECTION: Reuben Wechsler '80 and Ellen Levine-Wechsler '80 were not married in 2006 as the article originally stated. They were married in 2001.