A match made at Denison

The route to visit Andy Boyd’s parents takes the Boyd family right through Granville, and Andy ’00 and Hannah ’01 have been known to point out to their children the steeple of Swasey Chapel rising above the trees, far atop The Hill. That’s where we were married, they say. And from the back comes the exasperation of children who have heard more than once the origin stories of the adults in their lives. “We know!” they say.

Ah, youth. The time will come when they cherish the backstory of Mom and Dad. Life works that way.

Andy and Hannah Boyd were the winners of Denison’s Swasey Sweethearts Sweepstakes, held as part of the college’s celebration of Swasey Chapel’s 100th birthday in 2024. The Boyds, chosen from a field of couples who married in Swasey, won a vow-renewal ceremony in the chapel, a two-night stay at the Granville Inn, dinner for two, and a $250 gift card to Village Flower Basket.

The Boyds were married in Swasey on Aug. 5, 2001, joining a Denison tradition that dates to the first wedding at Swasey on May 17, 1924.

The Boyds hail from different small towns in Ohio and met during Hannah’s first year. Andy was a junior. He was majoring in biology with a minor in chemistry. She was majoring in political science with a minor in French. They both belonged to a group then called Campus Crusade for Christ, now part of Central Ohio Cru.

They hit it off and got to know each other better on a Florida spring break trip with the group.

“Andy’s birthday was soon after the trip, and I went out on a limb and baked him a birthday cake in the dorm kitchen at Smith and took it over to him in Huffman,” Hannah says. “After that, he asked me on our first date. The school year wound down pretty quickly after that, and we wrote letters back and forth all summer.”

Andy says he fell in love with her charm, beauty, and strength of character. They were a couple his senior year and stayed together after he graduated and began working as a nurses’ aide with an eye on medical school.

Hannah, still on campus for her junior year, realized she had the credits to graduate a year early.

“Andy was a member of the Denison Hilltoppers, and when he came back to visit in the fall of my last year, I got my serenade from the Hilltoppers to ‘Only You,’” she says.

She didn’t know that Andy had even bigger plans that fall, although there was a last-minute wrinkle.

On a big night in November 2000, “he wanted to go for a walk, and it was frigid,” Hannah says. “I was like, ‘Mmm, I don’t really want to go for a walk. If the stars are out, I’ll go.’ And I knew they probably weren’t.”

Andy went outside to check. She was correct.

“They’re not out,” he confirmed to her. “Just come anyway.”

His planned route took them toward Swasey.

“That’s where I proposed to her, under the pillars,” Andy says.

Hannah and Andy were married the following year, on a blisteringly hot day the following August. Swasey was the obvious venue for their nuptials.

“That’s where we first held hands, and that’s where Andy proposed,” Hannah says.

The day after their St. Lucia honeymoon, Andy had his white-coat ceremony marking the start of medical school at Ohio State University. They eventually moved to McArthur, a rural and medically underserved part of Ohio where Andy still works as a family doctor at a community health center.

Hannah worked in politics for several years after college but now homeschools their four children, Samuel, 17; Levi, 16; Naomi, 14; and Ruth, 11.

Samuel is deep into his college search. He and his parents recently toured Denison, and so far, Big Red is still on the table.

Now married 23 years, Hannah and Andy were reminded how much Denison means to them.

“It was really fun to be back on campus and see things again,” Hannah says. “Denison was instrumental for both of us. It is a big part of our story together.”