Scott Hunter Malamut and Dr. Thomas Howe McConville met in January 2006 as members of the same fraternity at Cornell University.
“Thomas and I were among 45 fraternity brothers, and among 30 brothers who lived in the frat house, where we did a lot of hanging out,” said Mr. Malamut, 35, who received a bachelor’s degree in economics and is a managing director in real estate investor relations and business development at the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm in New York
In living together, Dr. McConville, also 35, said that “we got to know a lot about each other and we became really close friends.”
Of what drew him to Dr. McConville, Mr. Malamut said, “In Thomas, I found someone who was super funny and witty. But no matter how much he messed around, he always remained driven.”
Dr. McConville described Mr. Malamut as a kindred charismatic spirit. “Everyone loved Scott, he was always the life of the party,” said Dr. McConville, who graduated magna cum laude, received a medical degree from Columbia University, and is now an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the division of infectious disease. He is also the winner of the 2015 New Jersey Marathon and the 2016 Delaware Marathon.
Before long, their friendship evolved into something more romantic. “By April 2007, we were dating,” said Dr. McConville. He was a junior, Mr. Malamut was a sophomore and they were no longer living together. But they didn’t publicly disclose their relationship, and would not until “about two years after we graduated,” Dr. McConville said.
Mr. Malamut, who grew up in Linwood, N.J., and Dr. McConville, who grew up in Pound Ridge, N.Y., explained their choice to not immediately publicize their romance by citing recent history. “This was 2007, before Barack Obama had been elected, and he and Hillary Clinton were fighting over their nomination and neither of them supported gay marriage,” said Mr. Malamut.
They moved back in together, into an apartment in Manhattan, in June 2009. About three years later, in May 2012, they were ready to publicize their relationship, which Dr. McConville said “kept getting better and better.”
“By waiting a few years, by the time we finally came out, everyone was cool with it,” Dr. McConville said. “I’m not sure if some of our friends had already figured it out.”
The couple decided to start planning a wedding while on a trip to the Atacama Desert in Chile in January 2019, where they had what Mr. Malamut called a “very anti-climactic” engagement. They initially set a date for May 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic led them to postpone it — twice.
After rescheduling for April 2021, they postponed the date again to Dec. 31, 2021, when they finally wed at Basilica Hudson, an events space in Hudson, N.Y. Stuart Chernoff, who was ordained through the Church of Spiritual Humanism, officiated before four guests, all vaccinated. They included Dr. McConville’s parents, Mary R. McConville and Paul D. McConville of Pound Ridge, N.Y., and Mr. Malamut’s mother and stepfather, Renee Kelleher and Mark Kelleher of Egg Harbor Township, N.J. (His father, William Malamut, who was a member of the same fraternity at Cornell as the grooms, is deceased.)
“What Thomas brings to this relationship is a drive to keep things moving forward,” Mr. Malamut said a week after the wedding. “He’s super hard-working and extremely goal oriented.”
When Dr. McConville was asked what he felt is his new husband’s best quality, he said without hesitation, “He’s the only person in the world who will put up with me.”
