Alumni reflect on finding love at The D.O.

The Daily Orange is not just a place to learn — it’s a place to fall in love. For many alumni, relationships have blossomed out of late nights and long hours working to produce the paper.

To mark Valentine’s Day, The D.O. talked to three couples about how they first found love while working at the paper.

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In the mid-1940s, The D.O. was organized more simply: editorial, sports and business.

Marilyn Cobert, who worked in editorial, briefly met her future husband, Harvey, who worked in sports, during their freshman year in 1946. But it wasn’t until their junior year, after they went to a party together, that they really got to know each other.

“Back at the time, they always used to look down their nose at these people who were just interested in sports,” Harvey Cobert said.

“Well you always looked like you were horsing around anyway,” added Marilyn Cobert, laughing.

After that party, both began spending more time with each other. They started having breakfast together and taking the same English classes, even reading Shakespeare aloud to each other while working at The D.O. office.

After graduation, things became complicated. It was the start of the Korean War, and Harvey Cobert had been drafted. After hearing the news, the couple decided to get married — and did so after he completed his basic training. Then, in November 1951, he headed to Germany.

About three months later, in February, Marilyn Cobert followed him there.

“After he finished basic training and when they said they were going to be in Germany, I started looking into going over there too because it sounded like a great way to be with him,” she said.

But she went home earlier than Harvey Cobert — who spent almost a full year there — partly because she was pregnant.

“I thought she would be concerned going into a foreign place like this, and particularly in Germany — everything was a still mess at that time — but Marilyn was just having fun with everybody,” Harvey Cobert said.

Decades later, the two now live in Tennessee, and have had four kids and four grandchildren. This June, they will celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary.

The couple looks forward to what that future will hold.

“We’re still just getting to know each other now,” Harvey Cobert said.

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Howard Mansfield was the managing editor of The D.O. during his sophomore year when he interviewed Sy Montgomery for an assistant editorial editor position.

“She came in, and we thought she was dressed for ‘Godspell,’” Mansfield said.

“… She was just colorful and had the hat and the feather and bright yellow danskin.”

Both Montgomery and Mansfield began their careers at The D.O. their freshman year, and stayed involved until graduating in 1979. During their senior year, the couple served as co-editorial editors.

But they never dated in college — partly because they were dating other people, but also because they considered the work they did to be a relationship all on its own.

“Sometimes you’re so focused on the work and on what you’re doing that the work was enough … It was better than dating because we were making something together,” Montgomery said.

It wasn’t until after they graduated that their friendship evolved into a romantic relationship. Montgomery, who began working at the Courier News in Somerville, New Jersey, after graduation, offered Mansfield a place to stay for a little while.

But their relationship is more than romantic: it’s a working partnership.

“I have to say, Howard is the best writer I have ever met in my entire life. And that is why I married him,” Montgomery said.

“And Sy is my essential editor,” Mansfield said. “A book’s not really done until she looks it over, and we discuss it.”

Now, Montgomery and Mansfield write full time and live in New Hampshire. Both published authors, Montgomery writes about animals and Mansfield specializes in American history and architecture.

The reporting skills they learned at The D.O., Montgomery said, are essential in writing nonfiction. Mansfield added it’s just a longer form of the newspaper editorials that they had always written.

Working as co-editorial editors at The D.O. showed the couple that their writing could affect the world, Montgomery said, and the “writing life” is a central part of who they are.

“I have somebody who absolutely not only understands it, but also lives it,” Montgomery said. “Making money, having security, churning out babies — none of that matters to us as much as the writing life.”

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For Lesley Conroy and Brian Tahmosh, it was not love at first sight.

During Tahmosh’s first night at The D.O., Conroy thought he was “a clingy feature writer,” who acted like he belonged in the house. It was a few weeks into the fall 2006 semester, and she didn’t know that he had just been hired as an assistant feature editor.

“There’s this guy that’s just typing things at the computer next to me … It’s been a few hours, and I’m like, ‘Wow, this writer is really making himself comfortable here,’” said Conroy, a former designer and presentation director.

When Conroy realized that Tahmosh was actually an editor, the two became friends. But things changed when Tahmosh became feature editor the following spring semester.

He was overwhelmed with his new position, so Conroy supported Tahmosh by talking through issues with him. Those late-night talks helped them build a connection.

“I asked Lesley out on a date finally because the night before, I had been close to a breakdown. I almost lost it, and Lesley was just talking me through it, getting me down off the cliff,” Tahmosh said. “She was there to keep me from doing something insane.”

After Tahmosh graduated in 2008, he went to work in athletic communications at Lehigh University. When Conroy graduated in 2009, the two moved to Boston. A year later, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., where they live now.  

A few years later, Tahmosh decided that he wanted to propose to Conroy where it all began. He called Mark Cooper, the editor in chief of The D.O. at the time, to set something up during D.O. Palooza in 2013. After the two had dinner where they had their first date, Tahmosh brought Conroy to The D.O. house to ask the big question.

“It wasn’t planned, but she just stopped by where we literally first met, the exact place where I was sitting and she was designing,” Tahmosh said. “Then I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She almost fainted, which was hysterical.”

Conroy and Tahmosh decided that in lieu of party favors at their wedding, they would donate to a charity that reflected their values. Ultimately, they decided on the The D.O. — it was where they met, and it’s a great asset to Syracuse University.

Even after graduating, the The D.O.  remains a part of the couple’s lives. They keep in touch with the friends they made at paper, some of whom were present at their wedding. Conroy was also part of the paper’s redesign committee two years ago.

“(The D.O.) accelerates any friendship,” Conroy said. “Normally, it would take you years potentially to see someone have a total breakdown, but you could see that within the first month of knowing people in house.”

Said Tahmosh: “I think the biggest thing — you see people at their best and you see people at their worst.”