It started during New Student Week of 1999. Now, seven years later but back at the Rock, Ross Grimes (Medill ‘03) proposed to Tiffany Berry (WCAS ‘03.)
“It felt like the perfect timing,” Grimes said. October 24 is their “anniversary.” “We met in Allison in 1999…we got into an argument and ambiguously started dating. There wasn’t really an exact date but we choose October 24,” Berry said.
Grimes and some of his friends arrived at the Rock Monday night to guard and paint. The paint color? Tiffany blue. On one side he painted the date 10/24, and “hey u” and “ilu” (I love you,) the two phrases they use as subject lines in emails to each other. On the other side, “Matthew 19:6,” a bible verse about marriage. And on the back, the big one: “Will you marry me?”
She said yes. Grimes surprised her by showing up with flowers at the school in Rogers Park where she teaches art. They went out to dinner and then to Northwestern. “We’re just going to take a trip down memory lane,” Grimes said. They walked through the arch and then Berry noticed the color of the Rock. It was a total surprise, she said, and she couldn’t stop smiling.
Berry and Grimes dated through their freshman and sophomore years but then broke up. Berry joined a campus bible study, life changed and they were no longer as close, she said. When they graduated, Berry stayed in Chicago and Grimes went back to his hometown of Atlanta.
Berry had wanted to do Teach for America in New York, but was placed in Chicago instead. Grimes went back to his hometown Atlanta for an internship, but a job opened up in Chicago and he moved back.
“God put us together and did this,” Berry said. The two reconnected when they began attending the same church in fall 2003, but the timing wasn’t right for a relationship then, they said. Berry and Grimes are both religious Christians and this is part of what brought them together. While they’ve known each other and have been dating on and off for seven years, they only officially started dating again within the last month.
“We tried to go other places and do other things, but we kept finding each other over and over,” Grimes said.
The couple would like to get married next summer at Alice Millar Chapel.