February is Heart Health Month, and with love in the air during the month of Valentine’s, let’s meet some RMU student couples who are partners in the lab and in life.

Brayden and Sarah Padgett

If love at first sight truly exists, it seems poetic that two optometry students would experience it. That happened for Brayden and Sarah, whose love story started when they saw each other at Orientation Day for RMU’s College of Optometric Medicine in 2023.

After sitting together in class and then becoming study partners, their friendship expanded from an eye chart to an “I do!” following a first date at Arches National Park. Not long after, they became engaged in Zion National Park and got married during a school break back home in Missouri.

The future optometrists are now on clinical rotations and look forward to graduating this fall. Their eyes are on an adventure in Northwest Arkansas, where they hope to practice optometry together and spend time by the lake.

Jess and Luke Hayes

Courtesy of RMU

A mutual friend helped these love birds match when they lived in the same apartment complex in Logan while attending Utah State. Late-night study sessions and friend hangouts fostered a friendship, but they weren’t lovebirds at first. They even helped set each other up on dates and shared dating advice before Luke finally broke the ice by asking Jess out.

There was an interesting dynamic. Luke was shadowing a physical therapist who also happened to be Jess’s dad when they started dating.

“Luke jokes now that he had to do some serious soul-searching to figure out if he was there for the career advice or to win over his future father-in-law,” Jess said. “One year after that first date, Luke proposed, and we’ve now been happily married for almost two years.”

Though together at RMU, they have different career paths. Luke is pursuing a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree while Jess is studying to become a physician assistant. Those programs have a fun rivalry in intramural sports.

“We’ve definitely had a few Romeo and Juliet moments during volleyball and basketball season,” Jess said. “But our marriage has actually helped soften the cross-program beef and brought our classmates together.”

Courtesy of RMU

Luke admitted picking Rocky Mountain University’s DPT path was an easy choice. “It is a great program,” he said, “and my wife was (at RMU), so that’s always a perk.”

They hope to team up professionally and use their specialties to administer wound care aid along with co-running a hyperbaric chamber.

Katryn Valdoria and TJ Guerrero

There were specific reasons why Katryn pursued her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree at RMU. She wanted a school that cared about students and their success. She admired and appreciated the faculty. She liked the school’s community involvement, including opportunities to do pro bono work at the PT Clinic. And she was drawn to the program’s emphasis on hands-on clinical experience.

One big bonus?

“Learning that my childhood friend TJ had also been accepted made the transition even more comforting,” she said. “Knowing I would have a familiar face alongside me, it felt like it was meant to be.”

Courtesy of RMU

The childhood friends from Colorado, who played Guitar Hero and paintball in the mountains together as kids, weren’t romantically involved when they reconnected just before enrolling at RMU. They’d lost touch for about a decade growing up when Katryn’s family moved to California. Coincidentally, they were both applying for PT schools upon her return to the Mile High State. TJ was further along in the process and had already been accepted to RMU, so Katryn decided to follow her friend to Utah.

“As we both navigated moving away from home for the first time, our friendship deepened and we became each other’s support system,” she said. “Over time, those feelings naturally grew, and we transitioned from friends to lovers. And the rest is history.”

They’re in the same cohort, so they go to class, study and hang out with the same group, so it didn’t take long for the word of their romantic relationship to spread.

“Most people assumed we were just close because we had been childhood friends,” Katryn said. “As time went on, I think everyone eventually caught on.”

They’ll have a long-distance relationship for about a year during clinicals — TJ in Colorado Springs, Katryn in California — but they plan on getting married after that.

Emily Livingston and Daniel Tanguilig

These two also lived in the same apartment complex while pursuing their undergraduate degrees and took time for their love connection to materialize. They started off as friends, hanging out every day and often staying up late into the night talking and laughing.

“After a couple months, I started dating someone I had recently met,” said Emily, who’s in RMU’s physician assistant program. “Not long into that relationship, I realized how much I missed being around Daniel.”

Daniel, a Doctor of Physical Therapy student, felt the same and confessed his true feelings for Emily, who proceeded to break up with her boyfriend. The rest is history — written in their book of love (and now in this paper). Six years later, they’re still going strong — in their relationship and in their studies. That made picking a grad school easy for Emily.

“The reason I chose RMU,” she said, “is because my husband was having such a good experience there.”

They aren’t the only ones who think it’s a great place to learn — and love.

Jody Genessy, senior content writer, and Brooklyn Hotchkiss, marketing coordinator, work in the Enrollment, Marketing & Communications Department at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions.