Finding Player Two: 6 Couples That Found Love At The ETC
Dilara Semerci Frey and Regis Frey
2014 ETC graduates Dilara Semerci Frey and Regis Frey both started at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center in August 2012. Three weeks later, they were dating. While they both describe their time at the ETC as intense, they also say being together 24/7 strengthened their bond.
“Shortly after the faculty realized we were dating, they got us onto the same team in the Building Virtual Worlds (BVW) lighting round to prove their point of ‘don’t date anyone from your class.’ We proved them wrong instead by surviving 2 BVW rounds – we even won First Penguin Award [an annual prize in BVW for the team who took the biggest risk] with our final round – and a project semester together,” said Dilara Frey.
After dating for six and a half years, they got engaged in 2018 and married a year later. They even had 3 weddings in San Francisco, Istanbul, and Pittsburgh. In their professional lives, Dilara is a Software Engineering Manager at Meta and Regis is a UX Designer at Roblox.
After living in the Bay Area for 8 years, they moved back to Pittsburgh in 2022 so they could be closer to Regis’s family when starting their own. They now have two kids together, Ada and Riley, who they’ve taken to the ETC’s annual Fall Festival every year since returning to Pittsburgh.
Dave and Sabrina Culyba
2006 ETC graduates Dave and Sabrina Culyba met at the ETC when they were both students, but they didn’t start dating until after graduation.
“The story is a little long and complicated, but it all worked out in the end,” said Dave. “We started dating and then I went to California to work at Electronic Arts, so the strongest formal date for our relationship in my mind is after I moved back to Pittsburgh in August 2008.”
Today, their lives overlap not just at home but also at work in Pittsburgh’s game design community. Dave works as an Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Curriculum at the ETC, while Sabrina is a game designer.
“She runs a monthly playtest night, mostly for board games, that some of my students go to,” Dave said. “And I just gave a workshop for ETC students based on the book she wrote on transformational game development. There’s definitely a lot of fundamental things that we help each other reflect on and work through.”
The couple married in 2012, and have two children together.
“One of the ways I mark time is that my daughter was born right after I became faculty at the ETC,” said Dave. “So she has the interesting distinction of probably being the first person raised in the ETC environment!”
Hyemi Do and Antonio Santos
2012 ETC graduates Hyemi Do and Antonio Santos met during their first semester at the ETC. They were part of an informal lunch group where international students brought in national dishes and talked about the home countries they missed. They started dating at the end of that semester, and although they didn’t work on any ETC projects together, they saw each other regularly and even spent a semester in California during their second year of the program.
“From the second semester, we have always been together — except for 6 months right after graduation. We both wanted to stay in the Bay Area, but finding jobs there was not that easy right after school. I got a great opportunity in Pittsburgh, and Hyemi got a job near Los Angeles, so we had to do a long distance relationship for some time,” Antonio said. “But every other week I'd fly from Pittsburgh to LA to visit her so we'd use that time to explore the city, especially Koreatown.”
Eventually they both got jobs in the Bay Area, where they married and where their son Ivan was born in 2017. 3 years ago, they moved to Madrid. Since then, they’ve bought a house and spent time exploring and enjoying Spain.
Antonio currently works on “The Sims” at Electronic Arts, and Hyemi works as a product designer.
Neel Kar and Camilla Kydland
2006 ETC graduate Neel Kar and 2007 ETC graduate Camilla Kydland first met when Kydland was touring the ETC as a prospective student. Camilla still remembers Neel as being charming and helpful, and Neel remembers what Camilla was wearing that day: a long flowy skirt and cowboy boots.
“We didn’t date when we were at the ETC,” Neel said. “We always joke that we had initial chemistry the summer before school started at a party and sat next to one another to chat. But another student that knew Camilla in undergrad noticed our chemistry and quickly separated us, preventing anything from developing,” said Kar. Neel was a BVW teaching assistant during Camilla’s first semester, so instead he focused on being a mentor.
Eventually, he left for an internship in Los Angeles. “At the going away party for Neel, I shoved him in a closet. I kept him in there insisting he not leave for LA,” Camilla said.
Years later, Kydland moved to California, and visited Kar as soon as she got to LA. Their relationship developed quickly and within a few years of dating they moved in together, got married, and had two children. Their kids are now teenage athletes who they hope will follow in their footsteps as future ETC graduates.
They own a home in LA and are about to celebrate their 16th anniversary. When they’re not spending time with their family, Camilla works on her web application start-up, Curveate, while Neel works as a Vice President at Petrol Advertising and as a consultant for AI movies and commercials.
Ketul Majmudar and Sudha Raghaven
2019 ETC graduates Ketul Majmudar and Sudha Raghaven were in the same class at the ETC. Their first interactions were all about theft — they made a game of stealing soft toys off of each other’s desks.
Before they started dating, they were friends who only lived a block away from each other; things turned romantic only when they ended up spending New Year’s Eve together during a snowstorm.
“I went to his place because I wanted to split the Uber, but then the snowstorm blew in and we couldn’t go out at all. We spent New Year’s Eve together, talking with each other and sharing a lot of things from our pasts,” said Sudha.
They said their time at the ETC brought them even closer. “It’s a lot of shared stress and working in teams,” Ketul said. “It was just really nice to have someone there for you when you’re struggling or looking for your first job. Moving forward becomes easier because you’re like this person has been with me through some of the lowest points, they’re the one who supported me and vice versa, so that’s helped sustain the relationship.”
After graduating, Ketul and Sudha had a long distance relationship before finally being able to be together in person during the COVID-19 pandemic. After adopting a dog together, they got married at the end of 2022.
“We’re very complementary,” said Ketul. “I work in the games industry, while she’s more on the tech side of it. And she’s so enthused about life and wants to explore, while I’ll go to a restaurant and keep ordering the same thing every time. We balance each other out.”
Chong Zhang and Greg Bliss
2012 ETC graduates Chong Zhang and Greg Bliss met on the first day of classes when ETC co-founder Don Marinelli asked them to move a cactus together.
“It was so logistically complicated because it was a big cactus, and we had to move it around the wiring infrastructure hanging from the ceiling,” Greg said. “I think my takeaway from the interaction was ‘she doesn’t like me very much.’”
After that, they didn’t talk until a particularly challenging BVW round for Greg’s team; Chong walked up to him to tell him she thought his project was really cool. They started spending time together when they were both in Pittsburgh over Thanksgiving break, and eventually chose to spend a semester at the Silicon Valley campus in California.
After they graduated, they both got jobs on the West Coast. Bliss has worked at Electronic Arts for over 10 years.
“I’m the opposite of my husband,” said Chong. “He’s calm and sticks to one thing, whereas I end up everywhere.” She currently works as a software engineer at Meta, where she recently hosted 50+ first-year students on this year’s West Coast Trip.
They’ve been married for 10 years and have a child together, something that’s come with the kind of challenges all relationships have.
“Sometimes you get mad at little things,” Chong said. “But deep down, it always comes down to: Does he love me? Yes. Do I love him? Yes, I do. So everything else is negotiable.”
But there have been extraordinary challenges too. In 2022, Chong faced a serious health crisis when she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
“Obviously Chong’s health has been a shaping force and an incredible challenge,” said Bliss. “But it’s something we can’t change. One of the effects it's had is that I fundamentally never take her for granted. I have this really present sense of appreciation for her, and for every day with her.”
“We never said that we’d love each other forever in our wedding ceremony,” said Chong. “But by now I truly feel that we will love each other forever.”