First Comes BFS, Then Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage
On a September evening in 2017, Becky Soll ’99 and Chuck McVey Jr. ’99, stood together on the roof of Brooklyn Friends School, surrounded by family, friends, and the city skyline. It had been 30 years since they had first met in a BFS first-grade classroom, and now, they were getting married in the very place where their friendship began.
“We always stayed in touch over social media and would see each other at various BFS reunions and other get-togethers with friends and former classmates over the years,” Becky recalls. After years of living in different cities, they both felt drawn back to Brooklyn. “Wehappened to find ourselves single at the same time, both feeling like meeting quality people who saw the world the way we do was so much easier when we were at BFS, and felt drawn back to reconnecting with old friends.”
“Once we started dating it was just constant reminiscing—I think we both realized how nice it is to be in a relationship with someone who really gets how you grew up,” Chuck reflects. “It’s hard to sum up the lifer-at-BFS experience to people who went to some large public high school in suburbia, and didn’t have an interest in talking to any of their old classmates. That level of mutual understanding with each other was so refreshing.”
When it came to planning their wedding, the choice felt obvious. “Once we were engaged, we knew we didn’t want to go a traditional wedding route, and the idea to get married at Borough Hall, having a celebratory party afterwards at BFS just… made so much sense,”Becky says. “The roof felt like the perfect place to have our party—so many fond memories, being able to be outside, having space to invite as many friends and family members as we could. Plus, we used to chase each other around at recess up there, so it felt like the perfect full-circle place to celebrate—nowhere else made sense once that idea popped into our heads.”
Beyond their relationship, BFS shaped how they see the world. “We are both grateful to have grown up in such a diverse community, with all different types of people (students and colleagues), and feel like this has helped us throughout our life adapt to situations with different kinds of people and approach them without bias,” Chuck says. “Diversity in all ways seems to be something we alwaysseek out, that makes us feel at home.”
Even now, BFS remains a central part of their lives, not just in their relationship but in the friendships they continue to cherish. “We arealways seeking out new fun learning opportunities, always happy to have a new experience or gain a new skill, and that interest/addiction definitely was sparked at BFS for both of us,” Becky says. “We are still in contact (daily phone calls even) with so many friends (and even some former teachers) from BFS—people we’ve known since preschool, lower, middle, high—throughout our lives. We get together regularly, and always feel like we’ve picked up where we left off—so many inside jokes, hysterical laughter while remembering some crazy thing someone did, it’s so nice to have these lifelong connections with people—really couldn’t imagine life any other way.”
“In my early 20s, I spent a lot of time at the local dog park in Philly—with my own dog and other dogs that I was walking on the side, and there was this one woman I always found myself talking to—she was probably twice my age and we didn’t have a ton of obvious things in common, but we just always fell into comfortable conversation, always happy to stand with each other and remark at what the dogs were doing,” Becky recalls. “Months into this friendship, she mentioned her kids and where they went to school—the local Quaker school—and I thought, of course! No wonder I instantly felt comfortable and at home chatting with this woman—she’s a BFS-type person… the very best kind.” For Becky and Chuck, BFS was never just a school. “We both found ourselves looking for ‘BFS-type people’ no matter where we went—at college, at work, in life,” Becky says. “We didn’t know it at the time, but we were growing up surrounded by people who would be in our lives forever.”