From 71st Street to “I Do”: Three Couples Share How Their Love Stories Started at MMC

“I think this could be my person.”

Growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, Joel Acosta ’96 had his future mapped out. He came from a military family, lived in a city with three military facilities, and assumed he would join the Navy or the Marines. In high school, he set his sights on local colleges with strong ROTC programs. Then, a friend at MMC suggested he visit, a chance invitation that would change his life. “Agreeing to go was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” he said. “I fell in love with New York City—and I fell in love with the school.”

Both were shocks to his system. A world apart from the military-heavy town where he had grown up, NYC pulsed with life, diversity, and a welcoming spirit that surprised him. It didn’t take him long to realize that it was where he wanted to be. The College, too, felt different, with its open, inquisitive spirit. “In Jacksonville, my education was very much, ‘This is the way things are.’ There was no arguing with it,” he said.

Joel would meet his third and greatest love after enrolling at MMC as an Acting and Communications major: his wife, Erin Boyle Acosta ’95. But unlike his immediate connection to the city and the College, their relationship got off to a slow start.

Indeed, though he’d heard of Erin—a Theatre major from Queens who studied dance at Martha Graham—from friends, their first meeting in his sophomore year was rocky. Joel was a cheerful assistant RA helping students on move-in day, and Erin was a grumpy junior spending her 20th birthday hauling boxes into the res hall. “He was very friendly, but I was dismissive, like, ‘Yes, okay, just give me my keys,’” she recalls. “I didn’t want to be up that early.”

They lived across the hall from each other and had a few classes together. After a while, Joel said, “We just sort of clicked.” With both being the children of immigrants—Joel is Filipino and Erin is Irish—and having been raised Catholic, “there were enough commonalities in our upbringing that were touch points for us,” Erin said. They began hanging out and, by the end of September, started dating.

Erin remembers telling her best friend, Betina Hershey ’96, how quickly the relationship had grown. “It went from zero to a thousand in a couple of weeks’ time. I told Betina, ‘I think this could be my person, but I’m only 20 years old—is that too soon?’”

Their relationship deepened further over the holiday break. Erin went to Florida with her extended family to visit a dying uncle and arranged for Joel to stop by. “It was an intense experience—everybody was trying to make it the best holiday ever because the circumstances were so sad,” she said. She worried, too, that Joel would find the sheer number of relatives daunting. “There were probably 50 or 60 of us, and my family’s loud.”

But he quickly jumped in to support her. And Erin did the same when, the next day, they traveled to Joel’s hometown to visit his mother who had very recently suffered a heart attack. “A lot of what couples might experience over months or years happened within 72 hours,” she said.

When they returned to campus, they shifted from casual to serious dating and eventually moved in together.

One of their strong points, Erin said, has always been their ability to balance each other out. “As a dancer, I like structure—this is how you do a plié and you practice it until you get it right,” she said. “Joel has helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin and to take more risks, and you can’t grow without risk. I think I did the same for him. We have always been each other’s cheerleaders.”

They married in 1999 and later settled in Queens, near Erin’s family. Today, Erin is the director of family engagement and communications at Growing Up Green Charter Schools, and Joel is an in-house audiovisual professional at Lazard. Their two children inherited their creative instincts: their daughter is an Acting major, and their son, who graduated with a BFA in Dance, performs with three companies.

All told, Erin and Joel said they’re grateful for MMC’s place in the story of their marriage and in their lives.

“Marymount is a small school, but I had such a great education,” Joel said. “Going there was an eye-opener, and it taught me not to be afraid of difference. I’ve always felt proud of my time at MMC.”

“Getting married was a no-brainer.”

Marissa McCullough Peck ’05 has lots of memories of her time at MMC, but one in particular stands out. It was the spring of her sophomore year, and she was working on the mainstage production The Adding Machine as an assistant to Theatre Professor Ellen Orenstein. While Orenstein worked with one group of students, Marissa ran lines with another—or tried to.

“There was a World Series at the time, and some of the guys were obsessed with checking the score,” she said. “I couldn’t get them to concentrate—I was so annoyed.” One of the chief offenders: Eric Peck ’05, whose playfulness and quick wit could distract castmates just when Marissa wanted their attention. “He’s the lighthearted one, whereas I tend to be more serious,” she said.

That was one of a few differences. Marissa is from the south—Winston-Salem, North Carolina—while Eric hails from western New York. But there were similarities as well, which they discovered one night after joining the rest of the cast and crew at an Irish pub. “We realized we had a lot of the same values—loyalty, and how important our friends and family are—and we bonded over that,” Marissa said.

They would discover other things, too—like how their senses of humor weren’t so far apart. And how both had been eager to come to NYC to pursue their dreams. Eric had gotten into acting and improv in high school and had done Shakespeare competitions; Marissa wanted to pursue Musical Theatre and had begged her father to drive her to MMC one freezing January to audition. They talked until 2 a.m., before realizing they were the only people left in the bar.

There would be many more late nights like that, Eric recalls. Still, neither was ready to pursue a serious relationship, choosing instead to focus on their budding careers. They dated on and off, but by senior year’s 100 Nights Dance, they were back together—and this time it stuck, even after graduation took them in different directions.

With the help of Professor Mary Fleischer, Marissa shifted her focus to costume design in her junior year. (Though there was no formal degree track for it at the time, she was able to piece together costuming electives and independent studies.) After graduation, she completed a nine-month costuming internship at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, while Eric did Shakespeare in Bud Lake, New Jersey, voiceover work, and short films with friends in NYC.

They married at 26, one of several couples in their MMC friend group to do so. “It was kind of a no-brainer by then,” Eric said. “We both felt we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.”

After their first daughter was born, they decided to trade NYC for Marissa’s hometown of Winston-Salem. Marissa had been working late nights in the costume department at The Metropolitan Opera, while Eric worked evenings at Brooklyn Brewery and pursued creative projects during the day. “Our schedules were so crazy that Marissa didn’t have time to come all the way home, or I wouldn’t have time to go all the way to Lincoln Center to pass off the baby,” Eric said. “We would just meet on a subway platform, coming from trains headed in opposite directions, and hand off the baby that way.”

North Carolina offered a slower pace and the help of family nearby. Eric later opened his own successful brewery with a business partner, which he ran for five years before selling it last summer.

Today, they and their two daughters still call Winston-Salem home. The couple both work for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts—familiar ground for Marissa, whose parents are alumni and whose mother once served as dean of dance. Eric is a special events manager in the Office of Advancement, where he reports to fellow MMC alum Richard Whittington ’92, and Marissa is the director of the dance costume shop. They celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary in October.

At UNCSA, colleagues refer to the Pecks as a “pickle pair,” in honor of the school’s pickle mascot. But they’ll always be an MMC pair at heart.

“I was just telling my daughter Avery, ‘Isn’t it weird that I’ve known your dad for more years than I didn’t know him?’ We started dating when we were 20, and now we’re 43. That’s a cool milestone to reach,” she said. “At UNCSA, I see young couples in college together, and I say to myself, ‘Wow, that used to be us.’”

“It feels like a natural partnership.”

Theatre alums Greg Uliasz ’12 and Eric Leiggi ’15 crossed paths dozens of times at MMC before realizing they had something special between them. When Eric, as a high school senior whittling down his college choices, came to 71st Street for an accepted students event, he watched Greg perform in the mainstage production Sweet Charity. The next year, they would be castmates in the play Last Kiss. And both would develop close ties to the show’s director, guest artist Patricia Birch H’14, who’d become Greg’s mentor and an important part of the couple’s story.

But it wasn’t until after Greg graduated that sparks began to fly. The following January, he was hired by Birch to serve as associate director of a new production, Bespoke, featuring Eric in the cast. This time, they bonded over small things like discovering they had the same BlackBerry. “I suppose it seemed insignificant back then, but it was one of the first times I remember sitting down and having a real conversation with Greg,” Eric said.

They also connected over bigger things, like their shared love for the College. For Eric, who had grown up in Princeton, New Jersey, MMC had always felt like a good fit; for Greg, a transfer student from New Hampshire, it brought confirmation that the theatre world was indeed the place for him, after stints at other schools had made him question his path. “I love Marymount,” Greg said. “For me, it became this caring community within the larger context of New York City, this home base where I felt comfortable.”

So when a first-year student stopped them after rehearsal to ask for advice on navigating MMC, they were more than happy to offer it. “Afterwards, Greg and I hung around talking—I can picture the studio at Marymount, with just the two of us, chatting,” Eric said. “That’s when we exchanged numbers.” They started taking their lunch breaks together and eventually made their debut as a couple at a college event.

Greg was right alongside Eric for his final two and a half years of college. “I joke that I went to Marymount twice because of him,” he said.

They moved in together in Eric’s senior year, focused on launching their careers. Eric would eventually become an agent at the boutique talent agency The Mine, where he works alongside alum Ellery Sandhu ’01, while Greg would become an equity partner at the talent agency McDonald Selznick Associates.

Still, even as their relationship was going strong, it would be eight years before marriage factored into the conversation. “Our focus back then was just on being together as a couple,” Eric said. “We had developed an adult life together (complete with our dog, Tommy), a life outside of school, and it was great.”

That equation changed, as so many things did, in 2020. With the Covid pandemic engulfing the city, the couple temporarily relocated to Cape Cod. They found themselves spending even more time together as the world around them shut down. The pandemic also shifted their thinking, making them take stock of what’s important. “Covid put life into perspective,” Eric said. “It caused us all to pause, and for Greg and me, that made us decide that we wanted to get married.” Hoping to tell their families in person, they waited almost a year to break the news, which they did while socially distancing across their driveways.

They married in 2021, with fellow alum Cait Murphy ’11—who had performed alongside Greg in Sweet Charity—serving as officiant. They’ll celebrate their fifth anniversary in October.

“Sometimes the elements of life can break a couple, but we are stronger for any challenges we have faced,” Eric said. “Greg’s my best friend, and we genuinely love doing things as a couple and figuring out our lives together. It really feels like a natural partnership.”

See below for additional photos from the couples. We love sharing the connections our alums have made on 71st Street—tap the links to learn more about friendships and business partnerships that began at MMC.

Published: March 31, 2026