While a sterile research laboratory or the cadaver dissection rooms are not necessarily traditional settings for a ‘meet-cute’, Emory is home to several co-investigators, faculty members and clinicians who will be taking a break from analyzing data and treating patients to celebrate Valentine’s Day together.
Following in the footsteps of Pierre and Marie Curie, these campus couples are proving that the best science is produced in pairs.
Jeannette Guarner and Carlos del Rio
Jeannette Guarner and Carlos del Rio’s love story began in Mexico City, where they grew up near each other and first crossed paths as medical students. When Guarner became ill with hepatitis in her first year of medical school, del Rio showed his caring nature by bringing her class notes so she wouldn’t fall behind.
“While others avoided me because I was sick, Carlos didn’t hesitate to help,” Guarner recalls. “It made me pay more attention to him and realize he was someone special.” Avid sports fans, Jeannette Guarner and Carlos del Rio attend an Atlanta United game together.
The couple’s academic journeys brought them to Emory in 1982 as visiting medical students. After completing medical training in Mexico and getting married, they returned to Emory in 1983 for residency — del Rio in medicine and Guarner in pathology. After spending seven years working in Mexico, they returned to Emory in 1996, where their careers flourished. Today, Guarner is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and vice chair for faculty affairs and development, while del Rio is chair of the Department of Medicine.
Jeannette Guarner's and Carlos del Rio’s first badges in residency.
Proud parents of two Emory graduates, Guarner and del Rio now enjoy their role as grandparents. When asked for advice on balancing two demanding careers, they emphasize mutual respect, shared responsibilities and supporting each other’s goals.
Jennifer Rieser and Gordon Berman
Jennifer Rieser, assistant professor of physics, and Gordon Berman, associate professor of biology, connected at Cornell University in 2006. They are fascinated by the biophysics of animal behaviors, tackling esoteric questions such as variations in how organisms move.
Naomi, nestled between her parents Jennifer Rieser and Gordon Berman, celebrated the most recent Halloween as a butterfly. 
“I reached out to him afterwards to learn more about what it’s like at Cornell,” Rieser says.
Berman didn’t discourage her. She was enrolled that fall, and, by Christmas, Berman informed his mother he had a girlfriend. They married in 2010.
Their eventual move to Atlanta was a homecoming for Rieser, who grew up in nearby Lawrenceville, while Berman is from Michigan.
During the COVID-19 lockdown they shared a Midtown loft, teaching online on opposite sides of the space, sometimes simultaneously. “And we didn’t get tired of each other,” Berman says. “We survived that test.”
They now live just a few blocks from campus with daughter, Naomi, who is two-and-a-half, and dogs Escher and Kona.
Berman focuses more on theoretical and computational methods, while Rieser takes an experimental approach to the locomotion of everything from snakes to ants. They often run their research by one another to get feedback from their complementary strengths.
They manage to combine work and play, traveling together following conferences or summer teaching gigs that took them to Brazil, Italy and Germany. And they enjoy cooking and eating nice meals.
“I tend to bake things,” Rieser says.
“She’s more a creature of precision,” Berman explains. “Her signature dish is a chocolate babka, a very decadent bread.”
“He’s more of an improvisational chef,” Rieser says.
“Give me a cabinet of ingredients and a couple of adjectives,” Berman says, “and I can make you a bespoke, likely unrepeatable cocktail.”
Jill and Bryan Wells
Jill and Bryan Wells are in Cancun, Mexico, for a wedding, some rare couple time amidst their hectic lives as physicians and parents. But they’ve already had two Zoom meetings this morning: a parent-teacher conference and this interview. Jill and Bryan Wells with their three children. Kelsey Kradell Photography
Bryan Wells, an Emory cardiologist with a focus on vascular medicine, and Jill Wells, an ocular oncologist at the Emory Eye Center, met as students at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Their courtship was a story of patience and persistence, Bryan Wells says: “I always tell people it was sympathy on her part, and persistence on mine.”
“Since Bryan was from Augusta, I got to know his family and friends really well,” Jill Wells says. “We had dinner at his parents’ house and spent time at their lake house the summer after our first year of medical school.”
They married 20 years ago this May at the First Presbyterian Church in Athens, where Jill Wells grew up.
“We had similar values and interests, and our life goals aligned, which made things smooth and natural and sustainable long term,” says Bryan Wells. “Also, she really likes my jokes and thinks I’m funny.”
Jill Wells adds, “I’m fairly quiet and introverted, but around Bryan, I can totally be myself. He got me from the beginning. And he thought I was kind of funny, too.”
After completing their fellowships and medical training at Emory, they decided to stay and soon moved on to the next phase: parenting. “We’ve loved all the phases,” says Bryan Wells.
“We have three kids, 13, 11 and 9,” says Jill Wells. “Our families are all close by, and we have wonderful nannies and sitters.’
“The strategy is to divide and conquer,” says Bryan Wells. “We have a full schedule, but we don’t want it to feel busy. We make time to hang out as a family.”
Sharing the drive and motivation required for careers in medicine has helped them support each other. “We can relate to the demands of our jobs and our commitment to our patients,” says Jill Wells. “If someone is late getting home, has journal club or has to get on a Zoom meeting, we fill in around that and make it work.”
“Scheduling is not easy,” says Bryan Wells, “but I think it reinforces the importance of communication and prioritizing as a couple. We’re understanding and flexible when things come up, and they always do. We work a lot, but we also hold each other accountable for everything else that is important — family, our relationship and our health.”
Jessica Arluck and Douglas Ander
Jessica Arluck and Douglas Ander met while on a college tour at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Some might call it a chance meeting; others might call it fate.
Jessica Arluck and Douglas Ander taking in the sights and sounds of Iguazu Falls in Brazil.
Several months later, they both enrolled at Brandeis and struck up a friendship when they landed in the same freshman chemistry class. By their junior year in college, they became lab partners in organic chemistry and the friendship grew stronger.
Medical school brought separation by distance, but not by the heart. Arluck went to The Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus and Ander attended Hahnemann University in Philadelphia (which closed in 2019 and is now Drexel University). They stayed in touch through calls and visits the first two years of med school, then officially began dating long-distance soon after.
With a real connection and their romance budding, Arluck and Ander applied for the couples’ match for residency training and both matched in Detroit.
“We chose the less romantic route for residency training,” says Ander, with a laugh. “Instead of proposing to Jessica then committing to the couples’ match, we first matched as a couple then I proposed to her. I went to shop for a diamond as soon as we decided to enroll in the couples’ match.” Jessica Arluck and Douglas Ander attending the Paris Olympics last year.
Arluck's response, “You did? I didn’t know that!” referring to the timing of the ring purchase.
In 1996, the couple headed south to Atlanta to join the Emory School of Medicine faculty — Arluck in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics and Ander in the Department of Emergency Medicine. Calling Atlanta home, they juggled busy work and on-call schedules caring for patients while raising two young girls at home. The girls are now 26 and 28, living, working and studying in Texas and New York.
Nearly 30 years later, the two physicians continue working in their same departments at Emory, having cared for thousands of patients in their respective fields.
When asked what has made their relationship work, their answers are simple. “Being friends first was the basis to our relationship, and we’ve always had mutual respect for each other’s profession,” says Ander. “Our relationship has always been a partnership, where we both took care of our children and helped and supported each other.”
Arluck answers similarly, “We always make time for each other and Doug is the nicest human being and so kind. He really cares so much about his family, his patients, students and colleagues.”
Since becoming empty nesters, they continue to make time for each other. They love to travel and explore different parts of the world together.
Whether that chance meeting on the Brandeis college campus tour as teenagers was luck or fate, one will never know. What is known — that early encounter has led to many years of love, support and teamwork together as a happy couple.
Divya Gupta and Ravi Rajani
Divya Gupta and Ravi Rajani say they're grateful for the "shared language" of their professional lives in medicine.
Once upon a time (in 2007, to be specific), Gupta was hard at work on her cardiology fellowship at Emory. She was already a rising leader in treating patients with serious heart disease. However, she hadn't had much luck yet in love.
One day, her friend Raj came up to Gupta and said, "Hey, my brother's in town, and you should meet him." Gupta asked Raj what his sibling did for a living, and when she heard, "He's a surgeon," she immediately said something to the effect of: "Hard pass."
In her experience, surgeons just didn't have time for lives outside of work due to the rigorous demands of the job — their career was their life.
Divya Gupta and Ravi Rajani learned early on that they both loved to travel, as seen in this San Diego zoo keepsake when they were dating.
Later that same night, she logged onto the Indian dating website Shaadi.com to see if she had any new matches. There, she spotted a posting from a guy who had clearly just joined because his image hadn't yet been approved.
This mysterious, faceless avatar reached out to her to start a conversation, leading with, "I'm a doctor in Atlanta." Despite not knowing what he looked like yet, Gupta was intrigued and decided to take a chance. It turned out they had a lot in common. They were both physicians currently working on their fellowships in Atlanta. They had the same sense of humor. They had similar backgrounds as children of first-generation immigrants from India.
After chatting back and forth for days, they finally set up a time to meet face-to-face.
Lo and behold, that's when Gupta discovered that all three people the fates had been pushing her toward that week — were one and the same human being.
"It was just meant to be from the beginning," Gupta says.
Ever since, they've been finding ways to grow their connection — even over the long distance of their early courtship when Rajani had to fly back to complete his training at the Cleveland Clinic. Gupta continued her fellowship at Emory, and the two flew back and forth between Georgia and Ohio as often as possible.
While visiting Rajani in the middle of winter once, Gupta remembers experiencing her first heavy-duty winter storm — and snow piles taller than she was. Needless to say, they decided to eventually settle down in Atlanta.
Divya Gupta and Ravi Rajani with their two daughters.
Eventually, Rajani somewhat nervously proposed on the beach in Miami during a spring break getaway. Their wedding occurred in downtown Atlanta, with a Baraat ceremony where Rajani rode a horse down Peachtree Street. (He laments that no elephants were available.)
Even though they both work at Emory, they've never taken care of the same patient together, so there is a bit of space. But being in the same field, they "speak the same language," Rajani says.
What do they like most about each other? For Gupta, it's how important family is to Rajani and how caring he is toward her and their kids. For Rajani, it's how kind Gupta is — and that "she laughs at my jokes, which is generous."
As Gupta and Rajani raise their precocious two daughters, Sai (11) and Indu (7) — both named after Hindu goddesses — they hope to impart on their children the importance of helping people and working hard, two values innate to their careers at Emory.
As you might imagine, the end of this story goes … and they lived happily ever after.
Story by Jacob Gnieski, Carol Clark, Mary Loftus, Alexis Hauk and Janet Christenbury.