From warm summer nights on Ann Arbor rooftops, to stargazing in Griffith Observatory, to cozy Christmas evenings spent huddled on the couch with cookies, UMich undergrads Grace and Rohan have lived out every hopeless romantic’s dream. The cherry on top? After almost 8 months together, the pair opened their Marriage Pact results to find each other’s names at the top of their screens.
Grace and Rohan first met while rushing their professional technology fraternity, Kappa Theta Pi, in the winter of 2021. They became fast friends during the pledging process and made things official that April.
The pair set the scene for their first date, which admittedly began with a few obstacles.
Grace:
At the time, my leg was actually broken. Rohan was on campus, and I was home, about 35 to 40 minutes away from campus. So he came home from Ann Arbor to pick me up. He had pulled a lot of strings to get the car to come home to see me, which was really cute.
Rohan:
I don’t have a car, but my parents and my sister have one. So I first had to convince my sister to come home. And then I had to tell her, “I need the car from this time to this time,” and I had to coordinate with my parents and handle all these moving pieces. It was a lot of work, but it was all worth it.
Grace:
We first ended up next to a lake by my house, and spent some time there just sitting and talking. And then we tried to play Randonautica, the game where it sends you to a random location, and it ended up kind of flopping.
But since we were already driving, we thought, “Let’s just go to the neighboring city’s downtown and walk around.” It was a nice night with a bunch of lights hung up along the street, and we played a game of cornhole that they had set up. Then we sat on a bench and talked and played board games before he drove me home. It was very cute.
Rohan:
I remember purposefully avoiding the exit on the highway, so it would take a little bit more time to get back to her place. Just to have 10 more minutes to talk to each other.
The pair finished their semester together and parted ways for the summer—if you can call it that.
Rohan:
We live like 20 minutes apart. We hung out a lot over the summer. I was working at the time, so we couldn’t spend all day together, but after 5 o'clock, we always made a point to try and hang out.
Grace:
A lot of people were working remotely that summer and ended up staying in Ann Arbor. I remember begging my parents to drop me off there for the weekend so we could go to our friends’ parties together, and sit on their roofs to just enjoy the Ann Arbor summer nights together.
There was also a sandwich place called Which Wich—our favorite sandwich place on campus that has since unfortunately closed—that we would always go to. It was kind of a trek on crutches, but it was so worth it when we got there. We’d go sit in a park nearby to eat and just end up talking and laughing.
The following fall, talk of the Marriage Pact permeated the UMich campus. Grace and Rohan overcame their initial reluctance to fill out the survey, but nothing could have prepared them for the result they received.
Grace:
It was a pretty big deal. Every club I was in was like, “Guys, do it!”
Rohan:
I was actually initially opposed to taking the survey at all. I figured, “What’s the point of matching with someone else when we’re already dating?”
But Grace had said, “It’ll be fun, we can just see who we’re gonna get, maybe it’s someone we know.” Neither of us expected something like this to happen.
Grace:
I remember walking around the campus Diag when I got the email with Rohan’s initials. I sent it to him and said, “Haha what if I got you, that’d be so funny.” Like I genuinely just did not believe it could be him.
And when the real match came out, we were together studying with our friends for finals week. When we saw the email, we just started dying laughing. I posted something on my story being like, “Blah blah blah, we’re the best couple in school.” Everyone thought it was fake. Our friends basically kept saying, “No way this is actually real.”
Rohan:
We just thought, maybe this Marriage Pact thing knows what it’s doing.
Though Grace and Rohan’s personalities and interests differ, the pair say they overlap on the values that matter most.
Grace:
On paper, Rohan and I can appear kind of different, in terms of interests and our personalities. I think our biggest differences are that I’m a little more extroverted, and he’s a little more introverted. And interest-wise, I’m super into writing, art, and more creative hobbies, whereas Rohan is more about sports and math and more logically-minded things.
I didn't know if that would prevent us from having answers that were as close to one another as possible, so it was actually pretty surprising.
Rohan:
But we share a lot of values as well. Politically, we’re definitely on the same wavelength. Same with our views on family and our goals for our careers.
Grace:
Yeah, I think ambition is a common value that sticks out. It helps that we’re both trying to break into the same industry, which is tech, and we understand the trials and tribulations of that process. We’re both really excited by the field, which is really cool to share.
Rohan:
We also have the exact same sense of humor, too. It’s never been hard for her to get me to laugh. I’ve never had more fun being around a person than her.
They tell me about some of their favorite memories since their Marriage Pact match, painting pictures straight from the screen of a coming-of-age rom-com.
Grace:
Over winter break, we had a cute Christmas-y day and went to his apartment. We watched a movie and baked cookies, and just got to huddle under blankets together. I’ve talked for so long about how that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I was looking forward to Chritams so we could do all that cute, cheesy couple stuff.
Rohan:
And the next semester, we went on spring break together with our fraternity friends to LA. It was such a nice chance to be together and be with all our friends at the same time.
Grace:
I remember that six of us went to Griffith Observatory, and at one point we all naturally split into pairs. So Rohan and I just branched out from the group and watched the stars together. It was a very main character moment, I’d say.
One of Grace’s favorite memories with Rohan, however, came during the first few minutes of her 20th birthday that April.
Grace:
Rohan planned a really nice surprise party for me. It’s funny, because I was having a really hard time the night before, because I didn’t think anything was happening. And obviously Rohan couldn’t say anything.
But the season finale of Severance had come out, so we were just watching it together in my apartment. We literally finished the episode at 11:59, and then at midnight, like 25 of my friends came running in with cake and balloons and music. It was so cute. He even invited friends that I didn’t know he knew, like people from high school. It just really showed how much he cares about me.
I really admire how thoughtful Rohan is. Not just to me, but everyone around him. It’s really sweet. Any time I’ve been going through something difficult, he’s always taken literally every step possible to be there for me and support me.
Though Grace and Rohan aren’t as close this summer—Grace in California and Rohan in Seattle for work—the pair made the most of their remaining weeks together, and have maintained their connection despite the distance.
Grace:
The last week of the semester, we were getting sad since we were about to go home and start working, and we wouldn’t be as close. But we had one cute little day where we just got to spend time together. So we went to Trader Joe’s and found a recipe from TikTok for bruschetta and some sandwiches. We cooked together and watched TV and played switch, and it was really cute and so much fun.
Rohan:
This is probably the longest we’ve been apart, since we’re normally so close when we’re at home or on campus. It’s definitely been a challenge, but being able to visit each other and still talk over Zoom or FaceTime makes it easier.
Before saying our goodbyes, I asked Grace and Rohan if they’d take the Marriage Pact again.
Grace:
I'm scared to take it again now, because everything happened so perfectly. But it’d be crazy if we did it and got each other a second time. That would definitely be something to brag about.
I wouldn’t discount it so quickly—you might be surprised.
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