From dorm rooms to ‘I do’: six love stories that started at AUC
For this Valentine’s Day, we’re celebrating alumni couples whose love stories began at AUC. From theatre rehearsals and presentation workshops to Dormfest and Erasmus returns, their journeys show that Liberal Arts doesn’t just broaden your academic horizons – it can shape your life in unexpected ways. These six couples met across majors, cohorts and even continents. Now married or engaged, raising children and building lives across Europe, their relationships began on campus and grew far beyond it.
Jesse (Class of 2012) and Yayouk (Class of 2012)
Married, in Berlin
For Jesse and Yayouk AUC quite literally made their meeting possible. “Jesse studied Natural Sciences, I studied Social Sciences – under normal circumstances we probably would never have shared a classroom,” Yayouk shares. As part of the very first AUC cohort, with only about 200 students in the building, “it was nearly impossible not to know each other.” Their story began during a presentation workshop, where there was an immediate spark. “I still insist Jesse had the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen,” Yayouk says.
The timing, however, wasn’t quite right. “We both dated other people in our early AUC years,” they explain. It wasn’t until third year – after Yayouk returned from an Erasmus semester in Istanbul – that everything clicked. “We ran into each other at a party at Westergasfabriek (and later at Trouw), and this time it was obvious.” From there, things moved fast. “This March we’re together for 14 years.”
“Liberal Arts quietly did its matchmaking thing”
One place in Amsterdam holds special meaning: Flevopark. “That’s where we had our first official date.” On a cold winter day in 2012, with the lake completely frozen, they went for a run – “mostly because I was convinced Jesse wouldn’t be very good at it.” That assumption proved “wildly incorrect.” Hot chocolate afterward became tradition. “Whenever we’re back in Amsterdam, we repeat that part. Running is now optional.”
Their AUC friendships remain just as central. “Every year, about 25 of us rent a château in France or Belgium,” they say. The week-long holiday is now in its 15th year. One edition even included a surprise: a fake wedding for Yayouk and Jesse, organized so friends could get time off work. “It escalated quickly,” complete with decorations, a three-tier cake, and a full Indonesian rijsttafel. Eight years later, they made it official, getting married in Berlin last summer.
And now, their story continues: “There’s a little AUC baby on the way – we’re expecting a girl this summer.”
Eva (Class of 2015) & Cas (Class of 2015)
Engaged, in Utrecht
For Eva and Cas, their story began – albeit a bit slowly – during their very first course in their first semester at AUC. “Eva thought I was a somewhat annoying know-it-all – which, admittedly, I was and am. This started a year of banter during our courses together, which ended with me asking Eva out at the end of our first year. She kindly rejected me, and we continued to be casual friends during the second year.”
“AUC is somewhat of a red thread in our relationship”
It wasn’t until Dormfest, the annual student festival in the dorms, that things really changed. “I grew a beard in my third year which seems to have done it. Eva made the first move at our last Dormfest, and we’ve been together ever since.”
Their relationship has since moved through many places – from the middle courtyard to room 1044, and a tiny apartment in the centre of Amsterdam. Still, AUC continues to hold a special place in their story. Cas, now a lecturer and tutor at AUC, reflects: “Dormfest is our anniversary. I even proposed to Eva at AUC, while she was eight months pregnant with our first child. AUC will always be part of our story.”
They graduated just a month after their first kiss, and in the years since, their relationship has grown steadily. “We’ve gone from a fun fling to knowing that we’ll spend the rest of our lives together.”
Marieke (Class of 2016) and Ben (exchange student in 2015)
Partners, in Amsterdam
When Ben came to Amsterdam on exchange, he expected to simply be a student at the University of Amsterdam. Instead, he ended up at AUC – “a tight-knit community” where everyone would continuously run into each other at the dorms. Ben and his exchange friends would always hang out just across the hall from Marieke’s apartment. “This proximity combined with all the AUC dorm and Solace parties helped overcome any initial nerves,” they say, and made it easy to grow close.
“My first impression of him was that he was just a stereotypical North American sports jock. Luckily, he quickly changed my perception”
In their own words, their AUC love story started out as “just casual.” From the beginning, they both assumed it couldn’t really go anywhere: Marieke was living in Amsterdam, and Ben was going back to Calgary. Still, something shifted when Marieke brought Ben to the airport at the end of his exchange. “That’s when it became clear to both of us that this was something more.” Looking back, it became the foundation of the eleven years that followed. “Those three months at AUC were like an intensive course in our relationship.”
Choosing a single favorite memory is nearly impossible. “AUC itself is the shared memory,” they say. “It’s hard to explain the AUC bubble to people from outside, so it was special that Ben got to experience it with me.” Since then, their relationship has grown from a three-month ‘casual’ exchange romance into “a full-fledged adult relationship,” now with a baby on the way. Over eleven years, they navigated long distance, a period living together in Canada, and eventually settled back in Amsterdam Oost – right where it all began.
Afke (Class of 2019) and Neele (Class of 2019)
Married, in Amsterdam
Their AUC love story starts, as many great ones do, with not immediately working out. “We met during Intro Week and didn’t really hit it off,” they admit. It wasn’t until their second month at AUC, during rehearsals for an OnStage play, that they found each other again – this time becoming friends. From there, their worlds slowly but surely merged. “We basically became friends with all of each other’s friends,” they say, spending countless hours together in rehearsals, common rooms, and courtyards. By the first semester of their second year, they were directing their very own OnStage musical together – unknowingly falling in love along the way. “We were completely oblivious.” It wasn’t until the end of the January intensive that things finally clicked.
“Despite commonly believed, we are in fact two different people!”
A night out at gay bar The Exit, their first time there together, ended with their first kiss. “Soon after, we realized we were in love,” they say, officially calling it a relationship in March 2018. What followed was a very AUC-style romance: practically moving in together, sneaking through dorm hallways in pyjamas, hoping not to run into classmates first thing in the morning. Some of their favorite memories are simple ones – dancing together at parties in common rooms, and picnics in the courtyard.
After graduating in 2019, they continued building a life together. “We moved in with a friend right after graduating, and found a place just for the two of us the year after,” they share. “A year later we got a cat, then got engaged at the end of 2024, and in August 2025 we got married.” Still living in Amsterdam East, they say they’re “very happily together.”
Elko (Class of 2013) & Renée (Class of 2014)
Married, in Utrecht
“We first met in the ‘Performing Arts: Theatre’ course in the Spring semester of 2012,” Renée recalls, “though Elko had already caught my eye before that, performing James McIntyre’s absolutely atrocious cheese poetry at an OnStage.” The next semester, she joined the Open Stage student committee, and the two were cast as husband and wife in You Can’t Take It With You – long before they even realized there might be more than friendship between them. “We took our sweet time. Probably because we were both giant nerds with zero relationship experience, and didn’t fully recognize anything that wasn’t just friendship.”
“We are living proof a Science and Humanities major can find love, as long as the Science major does theatre and the Humanities major ends up working as a software engineer”
Reflecting on one of their favorite shared memories from their AUC days, their first date – where Elko made Renée delicious Gado Gado with only one working hotplate and an overly sensitive fire alarm – stands out a lot. “To continuing dating this story to its appropriate time period: afterward we became Facebook official.” Another highlight is their first Valentine’s Day. “We both made custom cards with a lot of bad puns for each other without knowing the other person was going to do that as well.”
In Spring 2019 the couple got married, celebrating with many of their AUC friends – including some performing little skits at the party. “And then last year we became parents, as we welcomed our son Jens into this world. If he’s anything like his parents, he’ll be a creative little nerd with two left feet.”
Tobias (Class of 2013) and Merel (Class of 2014)
Married, between Amsterdam and London
Tobias and Merel had seen each other around the halls of the AUC building before, but it wasn’t until a dorm party that they really talked. When the police shut the party down because of the noise, an impromptu afterparty followed – and with it a long conversation. That night, they discovered they had more in common than expected. Both were Science majors studying Computer Science and shared a strong passion for art alongside their academic lives. “These passions evolved throughout our time at AUC and still continue to do so now.”
They both started at AUC before the Science Park building was finished, when AUC was still located on the Plantage Muidergracht. “There was a lunch spot around the corner, which was run by a lovely couple. When we started dating, we would often go there for coffee.” Although the café no longer exists, its place in their story remains. Years after graduating, Merel ran into the woman who used to own it. “She immediately recognised me and asked if I was still dating Tobias.”
Early on, their relationship was shaped by distance. Both went on exchange – Tobias to McGill in Montreal and Merel to the University of Nottingham, spending significant time apart in the first years of their relationship. They made a point of visiting whenever possible, with Tobias’s surprise trip from Montreal for Merel’s birthday standing out as a favourite memory.
“In true dorm party fashion, the party got shut down by the police – and that’s when we really started talking”
After graduating they moved to London together where they lived for over a decade. Now back in Amsterdam, they continue to travel between the two cities. Their AUC community, however, follows them wherever they go. “We got married in 2023 surrounded by family and friends, many of whom we know from our shared AUC days.” And somewhere in the background, there’s also Martini: “our imaginary corgi, patiently waiting to become real one day.”