After spending nine years apart, Latin alums Gigi Stender ’01 and Andrew Schwertfeger ’01 rekindled a long-lost connection that began on the Latin Lower School’s rooftop.
Gigi and Andrew were in the same grade from JK through senior year, and although they rarely had the same teachers, their small class size allowed everyone to know each other. After developing their friendship in Middle School, the pair dated in fifth grade for a few months.
One day during their fifth grade relationship, the two went to see “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” According to Andrew, it was “a really, really popular musical when [they] were kids in the ‘90s.”
“Andrew's parents picked me up with Andrew,” Gigi said. “I will never forget, he was wearing a leather jacket, and he got out of the car to come get me. I walked out of our building and then off we went to the play. Oh my gosh, it was our date. It was like our one big date. But then we broke up, as fifth graders do.”
Throughout high school, they remained friendly but were not as close as before. After graduation, they went their separate ways.
“We both went to different colleges, and we'd see each other every once in a while over the years around Thanksgiving or over the summer when we were back in Chicago,” Andrew said.
After college, Andrew moved to New York while Gigi was still living in Chicago. They reconnected at their mutual friend’s wedding in 2010, about five years after college.
“[The groom] was actually also in our class at Latin,” Andrew said. “He's been one of my best friends since we were in JK.”
The two did not talk a lot after the wedding, but Andrew came home to Chicago that year for Thanksgiving.
“There used to be a big Latin-Parker party at The Underground,” Gigi said. “I had an apartment right by [there], so I had anyone in our class over who wanted to come hang out before we went over there, and [Andrew] was there, and then we hung out that whole weekend.”
After reconnecting for the second time, Andrew left on a trip to the Galapagos Islands with his parents but returned to Chicago a day early to see Gigi instead of flying straight back to New York. In the months after the Latin-Parker party, the two kept in touch and continued to visit each other. They started officially dating in June of the next year.
Once Andrew returned to New York, Gigi visited him only once before he left on a trip around the world.
“I was sort of in the process of quitting my job in New York and was just gonna go travel for three or four months,” Andrew said.
He almost canceled the trip to stay with Gigi, but she encouraged him to go.
“I honestly wasn't sure what was to come, because I just felt like he was going on this big adventure and, you know, I was at home doing my same job, and [it was] a very exciting thing for him,” Gigi said.
Gigi ended up meeting Andrew in Paris at the end of his trip, where they said ‘I love you’ for the first time.
“Oh my gosh. That was pretty special,” Gigi said.
One night, Andrew cooked dinner at home for Gigi. At the table, Andrew got down on one knee and proposed. That is when Gigi gave up her apartment and officially moved in with him.
They got married at the Adler Planetarium in October of 2013.
“If I could envision a perfect wedding, exactly what I would want, it was our wedding,” Gigi said. “I wanted to have a crowded, sweaty, high-energy dance floor, and it was all of that.”
Now Gigi and Andrew’s two kids also go to Latin. “It’s just so full circle,” Gigi said.
Reflecting on their time apart, Andrew noted the ultimate benefit of going separate ways with Gigi before coming back together.
He said, “I think the timing of it worked out really well, and if it had happened at another time, we might not have ended up together forever.”
