This week, we’re delighted to share the story of Molly and Adam Fraust-Wylie, whose romance began during Spring 2003 at Villa Rossa when their Italian professor, Vittoria Tettamanti, paired them together for a role-play as “husband and wife.” This interview with Molly is the second in our Valentine’s month series of love stories that began at Syracuse Florence. Read the first one here.
1. When were you in Florence, and what were your majors and home schools?
We studied abroad in Florence in Spring 2003. I was a student at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania studying Art History. Adam was a student at Tufts University in Massachusetts where he studied Structural Engineering – in Italy he studied architecture.
2. How did you meet?
We had Italian class together with Vittoria Tettamanti 🙂 She paired us together for an Italian language learning exercise where we had to pretend/role play that we were husband and wife, ha! We didn’t start dating until later that semester, but Vittoria famously said to us once on a bus to her home to cook in Florence, “Is this a love story?” and the answer was ultimately, yes!
Funny story: both of our families happened to travel to Florence to visit us at the exact same time and we all went out to dinner together, so our families met each other. Adam’s grandfather was there and says he knew we would get married and said it during a toast during our wedding weekend. Pretty wild to think that all our families met each other in another country and we got married 7 years later!
3. Have you been back to Florence since?
Yes! We went back for our honeymoon in 2010 (and I went back before that in 2007 with some friends).
4. How has your story progressed since meeting here?
We were together in 2003 while studying abroad together, traveling to Greece for a month after the semester ended. We broke up before traveling back to the US knowing long distance senior year wasn’t something either of us wanted to do. We stayed in touch and got back together in 2005 or 2006 when Adam came to DC where I was living to visit friends and we met up… and have never been apart since.
We got married in 2010, with several of our friends from Florence attending our wedding. We took our honeymoon in Italy where we saw Vittoria and visited the Villa Rossa and then traveled to Ischia. Since then, we’ve had two sons, Max who is 13, and Renzo, named after our first date in Piazza San Lorenzo and the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. We loved the name (and my host brother when I lived there was named Lorenzo, but everyone called him Renzo!). We are traveling back to Florence in April and bringing the boys and cannot wait to show them the city where we met and fell in love!
