Over fifty years after they first met at Lafayette College, the couple named on the bench outside of South College is still sitting together.
The bench reads, “Gerry Carmelich Jaffé ‘78 and Rich Jaffé ‘78/Where it all began…/In honor of their 40th anniversary.”
The couple will celebrate their 45th anniversary together on Sept. 13. They met through Gerry Jaffé’s intent to have a meal plan beyond Marquis Hall — which meant appealing to the fraternities, who had private chefs in a time before sororities.
“You had to put your name into a fraternity and they voted on you,” Gerry Jaffé said. “Can you imagine?”
She ended up eating meals with Chi Phi, of which her future husband was a member.
“Imagine two young people, each with a hometown honey, having dinner together every night for three years and just talking about everything, including the hometown honeys,” Gerry Jaffé said. “We got to know each other super well.”
Rich Jaffé asked her out to Casino Night in November of their senior year.
“We were friends first for those three years prior, really, which I think is a huge positive factor in our now almost 45-year marriage,” he said.
“When we had different views going along in our lives for the next 45 years, we had a basis of commonality,” Gerry Jaffé said.
After they graduated, Gerry Jaffé worked in banking in the New York area and Rich Jaffé at IBM in Philadelphia. They agreed they would move as a married couple to whichever job brought in more money. Rich Jaffé won by only $100 a year. He retired last year.
The Jaffés have two daughters, the youngest of which got married last Saturday. The couple still live in Pennsylvania and recently bought a property in Florida.
Gerry Jaffé’s resident advisor from her freshman year at Lafayette, Barbara Levy ‘77, and Levy’s husband Joe Hollander gifted the Jaffés the bench outside of South.
“To tell you the truth, we are not big mushy celebrators,” Gerry Jaffé said. “It was just an incredible kindness of Barbara and her husband Joe to do that for us.”
