Wildcat Love Story

It was a classic scene from the Memorial Union Building. Senior year, December 2014: Kelsey Diemand and Hanna (LaRochelle) Furbush ’15, her best friend since their freshman year in Alexander Hall, deep in conversation. Suddenly they’re interrupted “unceremoniously, albeit politely” by a very tall young man. That was Joey, who Hanna knew from being an RA in “McLordoe” — McLaughlin, Lord and Jessie Doe.

Kelsey says she had noticed Joey before, cheering among the Cat Pack at UNH Men’s Hockey games while she sat with the Beast of the East Pep Band, and wasted no time telling Hanna, after Joey had walked away, that she thought he was cute. A few hours and a few texts later, Kelsey and Joey found themselves at Libby’s downtown, celebrating the end of the semester.

From their first official date in Portsmouth the next month (Mexican food, ice skating at Strawbery Banke, coffee at Breaking New Grounds) to making it “official” a month after that, they graduated that May, bidding each other a temporary farewell until they moved in together in August 2015.

During the nine years that followed, Joey used his biology degree working for a pharmaceutical company, until they moved to Maryland for almost three years while Kelsey attended graduate school at the University of Maryland and worked as a librarian at the Library of Congress. They finally returned to New England: Kelsey working in Boston as the associate director of Wentworth Institute of Technology Library, Joey traveling regularly as a director of operations and working in environmental infection prevention. They live in their first home on the South Shore, shared with Bergy and Pasta, two cats named for their Bruins counterparts.

In 2023, Kelsey and Joey embarked on, in their opinion, maybe their best trip yet. On March 20, exactly eight years and one month to the day of them becoming “official” at UNH, Joey asked Kelsey to marry him on an empty-but-for-the-sea-turtles beach on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

Fast forward to April 29, 2024, when the duo said “I do” on a beach in Punta Cana, surrounded by immediate friends and family. Their ceremony was officiated by none other than the wonderful person who introduced them all those years ago in the MUB: Hanna. A few months later, the newlyweds celebrated with their extended friends and family at Pawtuckaway State Park, down the road from the place where they first met and their adventure-called-life-together began: UNH.

The newlyweds shared some great advice for current and future Wildcat couples: “Return to UNH and reminisce every once in a while. Drive, train or fly up for a hockey game, make a date night at HoCo, or stroll around Durham on a crisp fall day. Just because you’ve grown up doesn’t mean you can’t go back to where it all began and remember how you fell in love!”