Maryland Love Connection: Michael and Kelley Marchiano

Michael and Kelley dated throughout their student-athlete careers, aided by soccer and track’s opposite competitive seasons. 

“I was able to be around for almost all of his home games, support him there and then hang out afterward,” Kelley said. “We would spend a lot of time at each other’s dorms and have dates at local restaurants.”

Michael added, “It was a good balance, and I personally never felt like it was really difficult to manage. It was easy to support each other in terms of going to games, understanding each other’s schedules, and waking up early and traveling for meets or away games.”

Michael hung around the College Park area, playing soccer professionally for a Maryland USL team, interning at an athlete representation firm, and assisting his former Maryland squad. At the same time, Kelley finished her last year of undergrad. Then, when Kelley graduated, Michael was offered a coaching position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He invited Kelley to come along. 

“There was no long-term plan,” Michael said. “At that point, I remember we had looked at maybe Kelley could do [physician assistant] school at Marquette. But we didn’t have total clarity about what it looked like.”