In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Record brings you its annual profile of a campus couple. This year, Aidan McMahon ’26 and Matthew Magnotta ’26 discussed their love for Taylor Swift, the romance of Super Bowl Sunday, and their favorite memories together. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Aliya Huprikar (AH): What were your first impressions of each other?
Aidan McMahon (AM): My first impression of you was from afar, for months. He seemed very to himself. Charming.
Matthew Magnotta (MM): I thought he was very nice, and I thought he was very observant. I remember our first proper conversation: We talked about Midnights, so I think I was under the impression you were a Taylor Swift fan, which was not true.
AM: That came later.
AH: Did Matthew make you a Swiftie?
AM: Well, I kind of was a Swiftie before.
MM: No, he wasn’t.
AM: No, I was a Swiftie in the folklore and evermore sense, but I had never listened to any of her stuff before 1989 until Matthew showed me.
AH: Well, that’s beautiful. Tell me the story of how you fell in love.
AM: Technically, it all starts in Winter Study [last year] — but it really starts on Super Bowl Sunday. That was when we first showed our interest.
MM: I had an 8:30 [a.m. class] the next morning. We’re sitting there, and then it was like 2 [a.m.], and I was like, “I’ll just get a coffee tomorrow.” And then it was 3. And then it was 3:30. And we’re just sitting on the floor, talking and talking, and all of a sudden, it was like 5.
AH: So, Super Bowl Sunday, you talk till 5. Tell me how it developed from there.
AM: We were in the same class, and we just started going to class together.
MM: I would go to your radio show with you.
AM: Yeah, I would bring him to my radio show. There were songs that I wanted to play but was too afraid to play until we finally made it official. [Laughs.]
MM: In Upper [Paresky], I would force him to listen to Taylor Swift. I made him listen to Speak Now the night we started dating, because he had never listened to it. I was, like, appalled. It’s not that niche.
AH: If Aidan didn’t like Taylor Swift, would you still have dated him?
MM: [Long pause.]
AM: [Laughs.]
MM: I feel like, yes. People can have differences. It boils down to whether you don’t like this thing because you’re trying to hate and tear them down, or do you genuinely just not like the work?
AM: I have changed. When I was in high school, I used to be like, “Oh, I don’t like Taylor Swift, she’s so mainstream!”
AH: You were so indie. What’s your favorite thing about each other?
MM: My favorite thing about him is how caring he is, and I feel like he’s very attentive to all things about people. He really goes the extra step to ensure that everybody is happy.
AM: He’s super supportive. Whenever there’s something that I feel proud about, you celebrate it with me, and if there’s anything that I’m feeling deficient in, you help me make it up.
AH: What’s a place on campus that reminds you most of your relationship and each other?
MM: I feel like Upper [Paresky] is so formative.
AM: Because that’s where we spent, like, all our time.
AH: And I was there too. [Laughs.]
AM: [Laughs.] Oh, the field behind Poker [Flats].
MM: I was thinking about that.
AM: On our two-month anniversary in May — after Sensations essentially — we ordered [Blue Mango] and ate in the grass. And we just laid.
MM: We did that again for our six-month [anniversary], but my back got eaten alive by bugs, and I literally couldn’t move, so we relocated to Dodd.
AH: That’s so scary. What is your favorite memory together?
AM: Over Christmas break, I brought him to [my family’s] barn upstate, and he stayed for a night, and I got to show him the town. My aunt lived there when I was growing up, so we used to go there all the time. It was nice to show you another part of myself that I don’t think we had shared.
MM: I also gave him a proper nostalgia tour of all my favorite places in Darien, [Conn.]. We went to the beach, we went to my school, we went to my “flourish field,” which is this field that me and [my best friend] would run in. And I brought him to my favorite restaurant where the guy knows me by name and loves me.
AM: One of my other fun memories is having you hear “Oh Boy!” for the first time.
AH: Wait, tell us about “Oh Boy!”
AM: It’s a song. I wrote part of the chorus line in high school, and then I worked on the beat a little over the summer. And then we came to college and I started liking [Matthew] a lot and then I wrote the song in two days in December or January. And then, ta-da!
AH: Anything else you want people to know?
MM: I am open to giving autographs. [Laughs.]
