Some things in life are just meant to be, and for Samantha Lewakowski and Stephen Olschanski, their relationship is “meant to be.”
“The State News was just another instance where we were literally put right here and they were like, ‘you guys have to be together,’” Samantha said. “We vacationed at the same spots, the same years. We were at Disney World the same summer, the same month. We were in so many of the same classes and we just didn’t know it.”
Stephen started at The State News in the fall 2015 semester and Samantha started working at The State News in the spring 2017 semester.
“I immediately took interest in Stephen on the first day of orientation,” Samantha said. “We went around doing The State News tradition of if you like salsa, guacamole or queso. He was a salsa guy and I was, too, which is the corniest thing ever, but I knew he was a good one from there.”
Stephen was also interested in Samantha from the beginning, but they were both hesitant to start a work relationship, she said.
They used a mutual friend and State Newser, McKenna Ross, as their go-between, Samantha said.
They had gone a couple dates—”we were dating”—Samantha said, when McKenna gave Samantha a delayed message that Stephen wasn’t OK with the relationship ending at the end of the semester.
“So I asked him about it, I confronted him,” Samantha said. “I was like, ‘so you’re OK with this ending at the end of the semester?’ He was like, ‘what? No.’ It ended up being month old information that she had forgotten to tell me.”
Before they were officially dating, Stephen said he would come into the office when he wasn’t scheduled to work, solely because Samantha was in the office and he wanted to talk to her.
He would edit an article and talk to her for 10 minutes before he left for his class across the street in Berkey Hall.
But, Samantha said she didn’t realize he wasn’t supposed to be at work until they started dating.
Once they started dating on March 17, 2017, everyone in the newsroom knew pretty quickly, Stephen said.
“I wouldn’t even say I tried to keep it quiet,” he said.
Both credit The State News for bringing them together.
“If we met at the same time that we did last year and one of us was working at The State News and the other wasn’t, we’ve said, I don’t think that would ever have worked out,” Samantha said. “People who work in a newsroom know you don’t have time.”
All the late nights in the newsroom, working and talking helped seal the deal, Samantha said.
“I got to see Sam do her thing in a first-hand light. Instead of, obviously, if we had two different professions. I wouldn’t have been able to understand her world, per se, if she was an engineer,” Stephen said.
While neither work at The State News now, leaving did not change their relationship, Samantha said.
“I don’t think that it’s changed because we’re not here,” Samantha said. “I would just say it’s changed from time.”
But, The State News will always hold a special place in their hearts, Stephen said.
“We both said we’ll always have The State News in the sense where as much as it was special to us before our relationship, it was more special after our relationship because that was the place we met,” Stephen said.
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