Nora Patrice O’Neill and Gabriel Grand had only been dating a couple of months when her twin brother, Patrick, posed a jaw-dropping question.
“Gabe, when are you going to marry my sister?” he asked over dinner with Ms. O’Neill’s parents in November 2014 at a now-closed French restaurant during Harvard’s freshman family weekend.
After a very awkward moment, everyone laughed.
Mr. Grand and Ms. O’Neill, now 28, first met in a dining hall soon after arriving on the campus as freshmen at Harvard that September. A week later, he sat next to her in their history of neuroscience seminar.
“I’m interested in brains and cognition and she in the history of science,” he said.
Mr. Grand, who grew up in Pelham, N.Y., graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard. He is now pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science focusing on language and cognition at the computer science and A.I. lab at M.I.T.
“We kept running into each other, and after the fourth time, we exchanged numbers,” Ms. O’Neill said. They both lived in Wigglesworth Hall, which has separate entryways but is connected by a basement and a laundry room.
Ms. O’Neill, who is from Washington, D.C., graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in history and science. She is now pursuing a medical degree and doctorate at Yale in the history of science and medicine.
