Chambers Boyd Moore instantly recognized Thomas Philip Moore’s distinctive voice as it rose up from a group standing behind her at a cocktail party kicking off their 30th Columbia Journalism School reunion weekend in April 2022.
“His voice is commanding,” said Ms. Moore, 60, first impressed by that command in a radio class in 1992. “He was a natural. ”
They got to know each other there as they prepared predigital audio “reel to reel” newscasts, which included ripping newswires from The Associated Press off a matrix printer.
“We cut each sound bite with razor blades and pieced them together with tiny bits of adhesive tape,” said Mr. Moore, 61, who goes by Tom, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from Fairfield University.
In March 1992, after each handed in a master’s thesis, they had more free time, and explored the city together a few days every week. In May, both received master’s degrees in journalism.
“We partied, drank, danced and had dinners,” and basically dated from March to May, with the end in sight, said Mr. Moore, who grew up in Baltimore. Ms. Moore grew up in Louisville, Ky.
Their escapades included the Cloisters and Jones Beach by day and clubs like the Limelight, the Palladium and Save the Robots, sometimes until sunup.
“After graduation,” he said, “it was adios.”
She already had a job lined up at the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper in Manchester, N.H., and was upfront from the start about getting back with her boyfriend after graduation.
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“We were caught up in the fun, in the merrymaking,” said Ms. Moore, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in legal studies from Simmons College, now Simmons University. The Moore surname is from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce, as did the groom’s.
Mr. Moore, who has three daughters in their 20s, is now an associate professor at the City University in New York — York College in Jamaica, Queens. Until 2023, he worked as a writer at CBS News Radio’s national network in Manhattan.
“I remember going to New Hampshire, leaving it all behind,” said Ms. Moore. “No formal parting.”
Ms. Moore has two sons, one in his 20s and the other a teenager. In 2005, she moved back to Louisville to work in corporate communications, and over the years she lived in Londonderry and West Lebanon, N.H.; Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Wellesley, Mass. She now works remotely as a vice president and financial adviser for Baird, a financial services firm, based in its Louisville office.
After graduation, Mr. Moore couch-surfed and was a stringer for The New York Times, where Ms. Moore had been a stringer during graduate school. He then lived mainly in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where the couple now lives.
At their reunion, they eventually greeted each other, then caught up over dinner with two other classmates at Le Monde, a brasserie near Columbia.
That evening he mentioned that he was going through a divorce, and after the reunion she soon realized her marriage was ending, too.
After Ms. Moore reached out to him a few months later, they began texting. In July, when she visited New York, where she rented a loft for the weekend in Red Hook, Brooklyn, they reunited for dinner at Fort Defiance restaurant nearby.
“It was very loud, but kind of cozy and romantic,” said Mr. Moore, thanks to sitting on the same side of the table so they could hear each other.
“He seemed like the same fun-loving person,” she said. He was “into journalism, and into his family as much as I was.”
They kissed good night after he walked her home, and the next evening they had drinks at Sunny’s Bar, also in the area.
“I had the glorious memory of all the fun things we did,” he said. “I wanted to reignite it.”
That August, when she had a business trip to Lake Tahoe near Truckee, Calif., he joined her, and he visited her in Louisville over Christmas, and the next time he was there in May 2023 they went to the Kentucky Derby.
Since her job was more flexible, and he taught a full load of courses, and worked at CBS at the time, she usually visited New York each month for a week or two.
“I remember liking him in the ’90s,” she said. “I’m happy I liked the person in 2022.”
They still both like going out, but in a toned down way.
“Tom doesn’t like to have the same day twice,” she said. “My kids’ nickname for me is ‘activity lady.’”
In February, he proposed at his apartment in Park Slope, over a candlelit dinner, with flowers, for which he had made what he called “a rather humble chicken.” They then toasted with Champagne.
On March 22, Jenn Zappola, who is ordained through American Marriage Ministries, officiated before his three daughters and her two sons, as well as a photographer, on the deck of a beach house the couple rented for the weekend in Huntington, N.Y., overlooking the Long Island Sound.
“It was important to let the kids know how important they are to us,” she said.
Their children also showed how much they cared — they pitched in with a charcuterie board, blasted soap bubbles at them after the ceremony and performed the Cupid Shuffle dance.
The couple are still hooked on journalism.
“We consume a lot of news together,” she said.
