The following year, when he moved to Cambridge, Mass., in 2017 to begin a master’s program in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, she took a two-year teaching job with Teach for America at a middle school in the Dorchester section of Boston. And in 2019, when she was accepted at Columbia’s law school, he narrowed his doctoral program options to the New York City area.
“He was choosing to make a major life decision around me, and that was really a big thing to see,” she said.
The two, who now live in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, became engaged in June 2019.
That year, Mr. Norgaard also completed his master’s degree. He is now a candidate for a doctoral degree in urban planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Ms. Chavez just received a law degree from Columbia and, this fall, is to begin as a fellow at Phillips Black, a public interest law firm.
The couple, who will use the surname Chavez-Norgaard, married May 27 at the Ranch House, a restaurant in Ojai, Calif. About 35 people attended the outdoors event, led by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, the groom’s childhood rabbi.
The next day, Rabbi Firestone led the couple in a Jewish ceremony, also outdoors, at the Ojai Ranch, before 156 guests. A reception that followed celebrated the bride’s Mexican heritage in elements that included a mariachi band, “as is traditional at Mexican weddings,” she said.
