Dr. Alyssa Rebecca Levine and Dr. Liam Whelan Gallagher met in 2010 when they both joined the Williams College swim team in their freshman year.
“Aly was in a different league than I was,” said Gallagher, now 34, who had come to the sport relatively late, at 12, while growing up in Baltimore.
Levine, 33, was raised in a swimming family in Berkeley, Calif., and started swimming while she was still in diapers. Her mother, Susan Helmrich, was the first female swimmer to be awarded a college scholarship at Syracuse University in 1975.
“Aly swam superfast and was the team captain, so I admired her from afar,” Gallagher said.
What Gallagher didn’t know then was that the admiration was mutual.
“Our team was competitive, and Liam fit right in it,” said Levine, noting that Gallagher routinely downplayed his achievements. “Yet I was also intimidated. Liam was doing lots of interesting things besides swimming and had a much more well-rounded life than I did.”
During their four years of college in Williamstown, Mass., the two shared countless hours in the pool, yet their friendship remained casual. Gallagher graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and chemistry; Levine has a bachelor’s degree in sociology.
After college, they took similar paths but in different directions. Both worked in health-related consulting before heading to medical school. Gallagher enrolled at Columbia University, where he received a medical degree in 2022. Levine, after a stint as a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, earned a medical degree from Emory University in 2020.
In June 2021, Levine, then a first-year resident at the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, reached out to former members of the swim team for a group hike up Mount Shasta in Northern California. Gallagher, an avid outdoorsman, was still in New York but had a brief break from his studies, so he jumped at the opportunity.
Neither Levine nor Gallagher was certain of the other’s relationship status, but during the ascent of Mount Shasta, they felt a growing connection. The group of five began climbing at sunrise, enchanted by the magic of the mountain. By the descent, Levine and Gallagher had an inkling that something was happening between them.
[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]
Gallagher was the first to acknowledge the spark. Several days after the hike — the two had decamped with one other friend to Bend, Ore. — they were shopping for provisions when Gallagher turned to Levine and said, “We should always grocery shop together.”
“I was smitten,” Levine said. The two arranged a day by themselves in San Francisco before Gallagher flew back to New York.
Despite their strong connection, Levine could not see a clear path to being together. They lived on opposite coasts, and each had years of medical training ahead in yet unknown locations over which they had little control. Levine was upfront about her fear of heartbreak. Gallagher assured her that “nothing bad is going to happen.”
Levine took the risk, and the two started a relationship.
While applying for his residency in 2021, Gallagher moved to Reno, Nev., just a few hours’ drive from Levine’s residency in San Francisco. When time allowed, the two spent weekends skiing, biking and enjoying the outdoors. They held their collective breath, hoping for his residency to land him in California, but Gallagher matched to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis, where he is now in his fourth year as a resident in otolaryngology.
Levine hatched a plan to get herself to Minneapolis, going all in to get matched for her own fellowship there, a calculated gamble. “We were planning our future before we had even celebrated a year together,” Levine said. She was still apprehensive about joining her career path to Gallagher’s so soon in their relationship.
“Nothing is scary with you,” Gallagher told her.
By Thanksgiving 2024, any doubt about their future together had long vanished, and just after the first snow of that year, Gallagher proposed to Levine by the edge of Lake of the Isles.
On April 18, under a bright blue spring sky, the couple wed at the Presidio Yacht Club in Sausalito, Calif., with 130 guests in attendance. Christopher Greeno, a close friend and fellow alumnus of the Williams College swim team, who was ordained by the Universal Life Church for the event, officiated.
“How lucky we are,” Levine said in her vows. “I am certain that we can do anything together.”
The post By the End of a Hiking Trip, Their Relationship Was Elevated appeared first on New York Times.
