Wedding: Michael J. Gaffney ’08-’10 and Jenny C. Carloss ’07

Michael J. Gaffney ’08-’10 said he “thought it was code” when Jenny C. Carloss ’07 asked him to come over for a study session the night before their American Presidency exam in January 2007.  “I brought a movie,” he explained.

But Carloss had other plans. “I had all the reading down on the floor. Mike used to be a Senate page in high school—he knew all this stuff...It was definitely all about trying to get as much info out of him as possible,” she laughed as the pair spoke of their earliest dating experiences.

So when Carloss asked Gaffney to a 10 p.m. cup of coffee at Café Pamplona a few weeks later, “I just sprinted downstairs,” Gaffney says of his tardy arrival, adding that he didn’t realize it was a date until he saw Carloss dressed up waiting for him. “I’m like, ‘Oh shit,’” he laughed.

Gaffney and Carloss will be married on July 10.

Sparks first flew between the Mather House residents during the Fall 2006 semester, when they took American Presidency together. Gaffney’s courses were scheduled such that he missed lunch every day the class met.

“I told him, there’s this great program—you can mail in your lunch order, and you pick it up. He would never do it and would continue to complain,” Carloss said. “So I put in an order for him and showed up to class with lunch for him. That’s sort of where it began.”

After Carloss graduated, she moved to Washington D.C. to work for a healthcare consulting firm. Gaffney began to work on the Obama campaign in the capital, and ended up taking a year and a half off—instead of the planned semester—to stay with it, returning to Cambridge to finish up his last two semesters at the College after the inauguration.

Gaffney proposed to Carloss during a hike in the Shenandoah Mountains late last April. They were talking about taking a trip around the world together, but they knew they were going to want a bigger wedding, Gaffney said, so they decided the extended travels would have to wait until after they were married. “Jenny said it would be years away,” he said. “I proposed right then.”

They plan to have the wedding this summer in Gaffney’s home state of Vermont and will honeymoon in Sardinia, Italy before returning to Washington D.C., where Carloss remains in healthcare consulting and Gaffney works as a political consultant.

“Mike is definitely every girl’s dream for a groom,” Carloss said.