In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Record brings you its annual profile of a campus couple. This year, Alex Root ’26 and Emily Swope ’26 discussed their six-hour first date, acting as “step-JAs” to each other’s entries, and their advice for finding love at the College. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Haley Zimmerman (HZ): When did you first notice each other romantically?
Alex Root (AR): Freshman year, I vaguely knew Emily existed as part of a long list of people my dad had of current students who are children of people he knew at Williams. We had lunch three times during sophomore fall. I looked it up at some point, because they’re all on Google Calendar. In those meals, I had the impression that she was very nice. In an abstract sense, I thought, ‘Oh, I’d like to get to know Emily better,’ and also, ‘I’d like to date someone like Emily.’ And then in a more concrete way over sophomore Winter Study, I thought, ‘Oh, I think I’d like to date Emily.’
Emily Swope (ES): Alex was going to pass a note to somebody who worked at the library asking them out, and I had a pang of jealousy. I was like, ‘Oh, if he goes out with this other person, maybe I’ll be a little bit sad.’
HZ: For the record, Alex never went out with the girl from the library, because in the first week of the spring semester you two went on your first date. Who asked whom?
ES: To set the scene, we had watched the first two Bridget Jones movies with you [Haley]. I think we watched the first one with you, and then immediately after you left, Alex stayed in my room and watched the second one. And then two days later, we watched the third.
AR: I wanted to ask her out, but I didn’t want to ask her out in the middle of the movie. I wanted to be on my way out anyway in case she said no. I was pretty much halfway out the door, and I asked if she’d be interested in going on a date.
HZ: And when it happened, how many hours was this date?
ES: This date was six hours.
HZ: Okay, explain to me the different parts of it.
AR: Piece one was watching ‘Poor Things’ at Images. Crazy movie.
ES: It was a really awful first date movie.
AR: Honestly, we probably should have seen a different movie for our first date, but it worked out great. And so we watched that for about two hours.
ES: And then for part two we went to Sawyer.
AR: And then after our scheduled two hours of doing work together in Sawyer, we walked to Water Street Grill.
HZ: Alex, tell me the thought process of that. Why the two hours in Sawyer?
AR: Well, I thought it would be nice to see a movie, and I thought it’d be nice to get dinner, but Images was showing the movie at 1:30 p.m., and we are also both pretty busy, and I didn’t want to take up Emily’s time in a way where she couldn’t do her work.
HZ: That semester, you took an English class together. Now you’ve done that several times. What’s that like?
ES: Alex convinced me to take ‘Austen, Eliot, Woolf,’ which has been my favorite class in the English major, or at least one of them. It was fun to be able to read the books together, and we would talk about them outside of class. It was also nice to get to know him in a different way, as we were starting to date, to see what he was like in a classroom.
HZ: Do you think your professors know you’re a couple?
AR: I think [Professor of English, Emerita] Alison Case probably knew we were dating.
ES: I think [Professor of English] John Limon had no idea.
HZ: Something that Record readers might not know is that your fathers were in the same class year at the College, both majored in math and computer science, and lived together in Susie Hopkins during their senior year. And now both your families live in New Jersey. What was the reaction when Mr. Root and Mr. Swope found out that you guys were a couple?
ES: Well, before we started dating, Alex had given me a couple of rides to and from school, and then at some point, I told my parents that I had gone on a couple of dates with Alex. They were like, ‘I kind of figured that that was in the works.’ Also, I told my mom that Alex went to a ballroom dancing class with me before we were dating, and then after we had started dating, she goes, ‘Yeah, a man doesn’t go to a ballroom dancing class with you if he’s not interested in you.’
AR: I had grown up hearing stories about Matt Swope [’92]. Not his name, but I’d heard the same story many times about an independent study he and my father did senior year during Winter Study, where they watched a lot of Boston Celtics games and tracked whether the ‘hot hand’ effect was real.
ES: Our families ran into each other sophomore year during family weekend, just as we were starting to get to know each other.
AR: It was her dad’s birthday, and my dad went over to the table of Emily and her parents and said, ‘Happy Birthday, Matt.’
ES: It was kind of an awkward interaction.
AR: It was very, very awkward.
HZ: Come junior year, you were both Junior Advisors (JAs), and you both lived in Mission. What was that like?
ES: It was so fun to be JAs at the same time. We could compare experiences and think through things together that were challenging or that were going well. A couple times we had joint entry snacks. What did your frosh call me?
AR: A step-JA.
ES: Yeah, so I had my step-frosh, and it was nice to get to know them and feel like I had two big communities.
AR: It was funny sometimes when I was leaving my entry for the night, my frosh be like, ‘Oh, where are you going?’ At first they didn’t know, but then they knew. Leaving AP 4, some of my frosh would poke some fun at me, and then coming to MD 4, Emily’s frosh would be in the croom, so I got to know the frosh who hung out in the JA croom pretty well.
HZ: What’s your favorite thing about each other?
ES: That’s such a nice question. It’s hard to choose just one. One of my favorite things about Alex is how kind and thoughtful he is. He is the most intrinsically kind person I know.
AR: But you know you. [Points at Emily.]
ES: Aw. You just treat everyone with such respect and kindness and thoughtfulness and care, and it just makes me want to be a nicer and better person being around you.
AR: I would say one of my favorite things about Emily is the way that her kindness and her commitment to the things she cares about interact. One instance of that was as a JA. I saw that she was taking good care of her frosh and using her kindness to that end, and I’ve always really admired her work ethic and the tremendous amount of effort she puts towards the things that she cares about.
HZ: Last question. What advice do you have for those out there looking for love at Williams College?
AR: Freshman year, I was coming off a breakup, and throughout a lot of that year, I was thinking, ‘I really want to be in a relationship. I feel like this is something that’s really missing from my life.’ I was looking for it maybe more than was necessary. And then partway through sophomore year, I started thinking about it less, and it became something that would be a nice part of my life, but not something that I really needed. And not too long after that, Emily and I got to know each other, and we started dating. So maybe stop looking so hard and just let life happen to you, and get to know people you care about, and see what comes out of that.
ES: If there’s someone that you care about and want to get to know better, get to know them better, and just see what happens. Maybe they’ll be the person for you. And that’s great. And if not, you got to know somebody else better, and that’s great too.
