From meeting in Bird Arena to marrying in Galbreath Chapel to both becoming professors at Ohio University, Holly Raffle and Craig McCarthy have a Bobcat love story through and through.
Raffle, assistant professor at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, and McCarthy, assistant professor of psychology, first met when Raffle was an undergrad working as an athletic trainer for the hockey team and McCarthy was a graduate student and hockey coach. They didn’t start dating until a chance meeting at Lucky’s Sports Tavern a year later reunited the two.
After a few years apart with Raffle at graduate school and McCarthy finishing his dissertation, Raffle returned to Athens, and the rest is history.
“We knew right away that we wanted to get married on campus,” Raffle said. “It was amazing having the wedding at Galbreath. You have to have a small wedding, but it’s a beautiful space and has such small town flavor.”
Raffle and McCarthy number among the more than 400 OU employees who work with their spouses or are in domestic partnerships with other employees.
Some professors work in completely different programs — Patty Stokes and Bernhard Debatin, for example, teach women’s and gender studies and journalism, respectively.
Stokes first met Debatin when she was doing doctoral research in Berlin. They lived in Berlin until 1999 when Bob Stewart, director of journalism, invited Debatin to OU for a few quarters. A permanent position opened while he was here, and he was offered the job.
When she knew that they were in Athens for the long run, Stokes became an adjunct professor for more than five years before she got a permanent teaching position.
Other couples, however, work in the same department, such as Dennis and Shelley Delaney, who work in the theater division of the School of Dance, Film and Theater.
But working in the same department doesn’t mean couples get to see each other, as their schedules might not line up.
“Our offices are about 20 feet away from each other, but we hardly ever see each other,” Dennis said. “(Shelley’s) day usually starts in the morning and mine starts in the afternoon, but we both have rehearsals at night, so we usually can’t even have dinner together. It’s the romantic world of teaching and theater, but we love it.”
To make up for lost time during the school year, the Delaneys head to Cape Cod during the summer, where they are involved in summer stock theater.
There are a number of policies in place for OU employees and their spouses that respond to both the romantic and practical side of the relationship, said Dianne Bouvier, interim executive director in the office of institutional equity.
“A lot of these policies are put in place to be safeguards for anybody that would be affected by the relationship,” she said. “Since Athens is so small, it is really common that there are family members who work together at OU.”
Practical policies can range from health care to opportunity hire, whereas romantic policies can set rules to make sure nobody is abusing a relationship, she added.
The Dual Career Network out of the Human Resources office helps the unemployed spouse with employment opportunities in Athens, Bouvier said.
It can be a struggle when moving to a university and not having a set job in place, but it’s a fortunate experience once both spouses are working at the same university, Stokes said.
“You have to stick around and have persistence in the meantime,” she said, “and I feel very fortunate to be doing what I love.”
@thisisjelli
ao007510@ohiou.edu
