Our Story
How Nick and Cara Met
Lots of people ask Cara and Nick if they met in Jacksonville or if they met at Northwestern or even Atlanta. The answer is that they didn’t meet for the first time in any of these places. Despite the fact that both attended Northwestern and both lived in Atlanta, they did not cross paths there. Cara did her undergraduate at Northwestern but left there a month or two before Nick arrived to do his masters and doctorate. Cara moved from Evanston and ended up in Georgia, where Nick was born, for a year, but they did not meet there either!
Cara and Nick actually met in Vermillion, South Dakota, in the spring of 2006. Nick was the cello professor at the University of South Dakota and Cara was taking her US tour auditioning for multiple university conducting positions. Nick was participating in the choral conductor search at South Dakota and was thus highly interested when Cara came to town. Nick was immediately impressed with Cara’s musicality, her passion for music, and her ability to draw amazing sounds out of the South Dakota choral ensemble. He also noticed her obvious beauty. Cara vaguely remembers Nick as “the guy who said she would blow up” and as “the guy who gave her a fried wonton.” This was definitely the impression that Nick was trying to make!
In the end, Cara broke the hearts of the South Dakota faithful by taking the conducting job at the University of North Florida. Nick remembers the students crying upon hearing that Cara would not be coming to South Dakota. Nick was also very sad too as he thought Cara was an amazing musician and a very interesting person. Cara remembers a creepy guy (not Nick!) telling her that while there was nothing to do in South Dakota, that she would have an internet connection and could visit amazon.com whenever she needed something. This profound statement nearly convinced Cara to take the job!
The next spring, Nick had decided to leave South Dakota to move closer to home. Amazon.com was no longer enough for him. After seeing that the University of North Florida had a cello position open, one of his colleagues reminded him that Cara had ended up there and suggested he call her to see what she thought about the job. Nick and Cara talked for nearly an hour and Nick had a great feeling about the UNF job and about Cara as a person for taking so much time to speak with him. Since Cara works 23.5 hours a day, this hour long phone conversation was no sweat off her back!
In the end, Cara highly supported Nick for the job although she didn’t know him very well. In fact, when Nick visited the campus, he came up to Cara after a concert and Cara didn’t recognize him. She thought he was one of her many post concert stalkers!! Nick ended up taking the job at UNF despite this and they immediately became friends. Both of them stayed late at work and had many great conversations as dedicated junior faculty members. After only two months, they started dating. They kept it quiet but in January of this year they got engaged, and in May they told their students, who were incredibly excited and happy.
Cara and Nick are very excited about their new life together and look forward to sharing it with each other, their wonderful families, and all of their great friends and students. Thank you for visiting their site and they look forward to seeing each and every one of you at the wedding in August and for years to come.