Anywhere you go on campus, you’ll hear about people who were #MizzouMade. There were two players in the Super Bowl from Mizzou, Jon Hamm and Brad Pitt passed through the columns just like we did, and the “Mizzou Mafia” is a known advantage in many of our majors’ post-graduation job searches.
Although the hashtag #MizzouMade often evokes things like hype and pride, it also has a softer side. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, MOVE took a look at two Mizzou-made couples who prove true love does exist.
####Columns Courtship
Eric Biernbaum and Alex Gray have known each other most of their lives. What started as a friendship in a St. Louis church as children culminated last October in a proposal that took MU social media by storm.
It was a Thursday afternoon during homecoming week and Gray had just walked out of class to find a group of her friends waiting to pick her up. The scavenger hunt that followed, planned entirely by Biernbaum, took her first to Excellence, her freshman residence hall, and where Gray lived when she and Biernbaum first began dating.
“I’ve always had a crush on him, but we waited until college to date; we knew we wanted to date with the intentions of eventually getting married,” Gray says.
Gray and Biernbaum had been dating for two and a half years before he proposed. Although the proposal was a surprise, Gray said she was half expecting it.
The scavenger hunt’s second stop was Delta Tau Delta, Biernbaum’s fraternity.
Last Christmas, Biernbaum lavaliered Gray, an Alpha Phi, and promised they would get married. Since that night, the couple had gone ring shopping together and talked about marriage.
Biernbaum, who is a year older than Gray, graduated from MU last year. He lives and works in Tampa, Florida, and was supposed to come down that Friday to visit Alex. To her surprise, he showed up a day early.
After stopping by Delta Tau Delta, Gray was taken to the football field, where their friends from church stood, and then to the Alpha Phi house. Her friends in Alpha Phi took her upstairs, where she fixed her hair and makeup before slipping into a blue dress and heading to the Columns for the proposal.
The wedding is set for Sept. 3 in a St. Louis church. Gray knew she wanted to have the wedding after she graduated so she could move with him to Florida afterward and start working on an internship there. Gray has a whole Pinterest board of ideas for her wedding. She said she already has her dress and the venue, and the colors will be pink and burgundy.
Gray says she’s not nervous about being young and getting married, but moving away from home makes her uneasy. However, she’s confident in the love they share and knows that this will be an exciting, new journey for the both of them.
—Morgan Brown, Reporter
####Mizzou Married
It was spring of Susan Scott’s junior year when she met the love of her life. She’d spent much of her time practicing for Greek Week in Beta Theta Pi’s dining hall; it was there one night she spotted 21-year-old John Reboulet as he left for an evening run.
Though it was over 20 years ago, Scott still recalls in an email him donning “white shorts and a long sleeved navy and red Polo shirt.”
After he left, Scott confided in a friend how handsome and amusing she found Reboulet, and she remembers him now as endearingly shy.
A mutual friend of the pair called Reboulet over after he returned from his run.
“I was smitten, and apparently (Susan) was not bothered by my backwards St. Louis Cardinals cap and sweatiness,” Reboulet says in an email. “I knew I wanted to marry her right away.”
Though this was the early ’90s, the beginning of the couple’s relationship looked much like it would today.
They spent two weeks lunching at The Heidelberg, having study dates at Ellis Library and talking all night on the steps of the Delta Delta Delta house.
Their first date was dancing to Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” at The Blue Note. But because they met so late in the semester, their two weeks of bliss was followed by a summer of long distance.
“When we got back to school and we were able to see each other again, it was really the time we both realized we would be together the rest of our lives,” Reboulet says.
With that realization, their senior year was their happiest collective memory. Now married for 24 years, Columbia is filled with memories for the Reboulets, from John’s wrestling matches at Hearnes Center to trips to Rock Bridge Memorial State Park and Les Bourgeois Vineyards.
“I can’t separate my memories of John and Mizzou,” Susan Reboulet, formerly Susan Scott, reminisces. “Even though we didn’t meet until junior year, Mizzou and John are one. Mizzou became so much more to me after John and I met. More fun, more special, more memories made, more relationships formed.”
—Cat Whitmer, Reporter
_Edited by Katherine Rosso and Elana Williams | krosso@themaneater.com and ewilliams@themaneater.com_