Jason Back ’16 and Christina Eliopoulos M.A. ’23 met the modern way—on Hinge. The algorithms were on their side and they both knew they’d found something special from their first date at Off the Rails Brewing in Sunnyvale. Jason called his roommate in the parking lot after the date to say she might be the one. “And I told my mom about him later that same night,” Christina says.
Though they met outside of Santa Clara’s campus, the University was a common thread linking Back and Eliopoulos. Jason graduated years before they matched online, while Christina was considering grad school.
“Meeting Jason made me realize how much he talked about SCU and the Hut,” Christina says. Jason likes to think he played a part in her final decision to pursue a master’s in counseling psychology at Santa Clara.
From sharing a love of dad jokes and Canadian tuxedos to pandemic quarantining and surviving grad school, the couple felt they made it over a lot of hurdles in a short amount of time. “Being together nonstop during early COVID and still growing closer confirmed to both of us that this was meant to last,” Jason says.