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LGBTQ ‘Mergers’ recall how they met their valentines

By Tess Sohngen, Senior Staff Writer

Meg Sullivan and Robyn Bockrath will receive their first Miami Merger Valentine's Day card this year.

The two were married June 6, 2015 in Chicago by a mutual friend, Lyndsey, who introduced them 10 years ago at Miami University. Lyndsey knew that her lifelong friend Robyn would be instant friends with her sorority sister, Meg Sullivan. She was right.

"We took an ice-skating class my junior year," said Robyn. "That's when we got to know each other a little better."

Both were dating men at the time, and despite being open to the idea of dating a girl, neither identified as lesbian or bisexual until after college. Robyn came to Miami from a small Ohio town and Meg from an Irish-Catholic upbringing, where people who identified as LGBT were not common. Even at Miami, Robyn said she knew only one or two out students.

"I feel like, back then, it was rare for us to really know anyone who was out-out," said Robyn. "It just wasn't on our radar at the time. If I wanted to date a girl at Miami, I wouldn't know where to go."

"It's hard to know why it was that way at Miami," said Robyn of the time she spent at Miami but did not yet know she identified as lesbian.

A few years after graduation, Robyn reconnected with Meg in a reunion with college friends, and they realized they liked each other more than friends.

Fourteen percent of Miami alumni marry another alumn, earning these couples the nickname "Miami Merger."

Meg ('06) and Robyn ('07) have now joined the 14,262 Miami Mergers and will receive one of the 13,658 valentines mailed from the Miami University Alumni Association (MUAA) this year.

While Miami has been sending Valentine's Day cards to LGBT couples for several years, this is the first Valentine's Day since the Supreme Court decision to legalize marriage last summer. They also received a Miami Merger cake kit for their rehearsal dinner from the MUAA.

Thomas Grote ('86) and his partner Rick Neal ('88) have been receiving Miami Merger valentines since their wedding in Ohio in 2007, which wasn't recognized by the state until this summer. Although they overlapped two years at Miami, they did not meet until 2006 in Washington, D.C.

Rick had completed his first trip to Morocco with the Peace Corp and went out to the bar Halo with fellow volunteers. Tom was in the area for the Human Rights Campaign and was celebrating a friend's birthday. They both ordered a drink from the bar at the same time and started chatting.

Rick's friends were teasing him for playing hard-to-get before he met Tom at the bar. Annoyed with his friends, Rick turned around and walked back to the bar.

"Rick and I just made eye contact, then we smiled at each other," Tom said. "We just clicked right away… From that night on, there hasn't been a single day we haven't talked to each other."

Before becoming a stay-at-home dad for their adopted daughters, Amoret and Sophia, Rick managed public health programs for refugees in Asia and Africa and advocated for better support and protection for refugees in Washington, DC.

Tom served on the Board of Trustees for Miami. As the founding board chair for Equality Ohio Education Fund, he is a leader in the LGBT community in Ohio. The entire Grote-Neal family led the Pride Parade as Grand Marshals in 2010.

"When Gov. Strickland asked me to be on the board of Trustees, I was surprised… I was like, 'Wow,'" said Tom. He went on to become the first and only openly LGBT member of the board.

Despite the support and overwhelming positivity they received upon returning to the Miami community, their time as an undergraduate was less accepting. Rick came out during his junior year after finding support and encouragement from a class focused on the homosexual experience, where his professors openly supported LGBT students to connect with each other. Tom describes his experience as more of a dark time.

"At Miami, there was no gay visibility or at least none that I could see," Tom said. "I was completely closeted, and I was living a lie."

But Tom sees a great change from the conservative and conformist Miami that he knew to an accepting and more diverse Miami campus.

"I'm really proud of the university and what it's done," said Tom. "I'm really proud of President Hodge, too,"

Upon their return to the Miami community, he and Rick said they are very happy that Miami never hesitated to include them, even though their marriage was not recognized until this summer.