Augie Sweethearts: Carrie and Chris Simkus, Class of 1999

Submitted by Carrie Simkus of Germantown, Md.

Chris and I were in the same Augie class and met during freshman year on an Augie Ski Club trip. We were both biology/pre-med majors and had some classes together, but we didn’t study together a lot those first couple of years. We had mutual friends through music, Chris was in the band with two of my high school friends. Somehow, we were always in and out of each other’s lives. Everything changed junior year. Chris was the first person I saw when I returned to campus after the fall Latin American foreign term. That term, we had a class together and instead of sitting with his usual group, he chose to sit next to me. From then on, we studied together, were lab partners and spent a lot of time together. 

The summer before senior year we finally realized that we had grown into more than friends and began dating. After graduation, we went to graduate school at Northern Illinois University. We married in June 2003, with Augie alumni as our maid of honor and best man. In 2004 we moved from the Chicago suburbs to the DC Metro area for my start as a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University. Chris works as a lab data systems manager for Novavax and I am a scientist at QIAGEN. We have now been married 15 years (going on 16) and have two amazing sons; 9-year-old Ethan and 5-year-old Beckett.