Kathleen Meagher Ughetta and Andrew James Wood were married Dec. 15 at the Lake Placid Lodge in Lake Placid, N.Y. The Rev. John R. Yonkovig, a Roman Catholic priest, performed the ceremony.
The bride, 26, is an oncology certified nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She was until May 2018 a home hospice nurse with Calvary Hospice in New York. She has a bachelor of arts in global studies from the University of North Carolina and a bachelor of science in nursing from Johns Hopkins University.
She is the daughter of Richard L. Ughetta of Chatham, N.J., and the late Suzanne Hanlon Ughetta.
The groom, 25, is a senior consultant with the treasury advisory group of Deloitte & Touche in New York. He also graduated from the University of North Carolina. He is a son of Laurie Campbell Wood of York, S.C., and Todd K. Wood of Chatham.
Ms. Ughetta and Mr. Wood met on a set of monkey bars at Lafayette Avenue Elementary School in Chatham, and their relationship was set in motion when he asked to hold her hand at their school’s fifth-grade roller-skating party. Later that school year during one very memorable recess, they shared a first kiss.
“It was on a dare from one of our classmates,” Ms. Ughetta said with a laugh.
When asked who had kissed the other first, Ms. Ughetta, laughing much harder, said, “I think it was a tie.”
They dated throughout high school and continued as an item through most of their time together at North Carolina, but in their last semester as seniors, their relationship “hit a serious rough patch,” as Ms. Ughetta put it.
They graduated from North Carolina in May 2015, but rather than going separate ways, they got into Mr. Wood’s Subaru two months later and drove 10,000 miles, from the Jersey Shore to the California coast and back, camping and hiking at close to 20 national parks and forests.
Along the way, they discussed a great many matters of the heart, everything from the reasons their longtime relationship made so much sense to the senseless death of Ms. Ughetta’s mother, who had died two years earlier from nonsmoker’s lung cancer and became her inspiration for pursuing a career in oncology and end-of-life care.
“Many things were mended during the course of that trip,” Ms. Ughetta said. “Above all, we realized how much we always enjoyed each other’s company.”
Mr. Wood, who proposed last Christmas, said simply, “I realized my life made more sense with her than without her.”
The couple, who list the outdoors as one of their primary shared interests, have successfully climbed the 46 high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains together, two-thirds of that accomplishment coming after their long road trip.
Ms. Ughetta said that scaling the Adirondacks was “a shared experience that strengthened our bond and helped us decide to formalize our union.”
The impact that those mountains have had on their relationship, she said, greatly influenced their decision to exchange their vows in Lake Placid.
In July, they plan to spend their honeymoon attempting a southbound-thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.
“These are the kinds of things I love doing with Andrew, who has always been my adventure partner,” Ms. Ughetta said. “I realized many years ago that when he’s not around, my life is pretty boring.”
