Noel Kullavanijaya and Wendy Williams in grad school
Noel Kullavanijaya hadn’t exactly dressed for the job he wanted. It was just another school night in November 1981, and the mechanical engineering major went to study in University Library wearing a pair of his favorite, albeit torn, jeans.
“They were totally ripped up,” recalled Wendy Williams, an Honors Program in Medical Education student in her second year in Evanston also studying at the library that night. “Completely ripped. I could see his underwear. Back then, that was not the thing.”
Kullavanijaya had just gotten up from studying because it was 9 p.m. — that’s when students met up in the second-floor lounge for “coffee break,” a nightly social activity in that era. Along the way, Williams caught a glimpse of Kullavanijaya’s sartorial choice, and it offended her sensibility. So she told him so.
“I was drinking at the water fountain,” Kullavanijaya said. “I heard a southern voice say, ‘Those jeans are disgusting. You shouldn’t be wearing them in public.’”
Just like that, Kullavanijaya and Williams went from two strangers to another Northwestern couple destined to owe their marriage to a library meet-cute. Even if it didn’t sound that cute in the moment.
Kullavanijaya ’82, MSME ’85, MBA ’86 and Williams 84, MD ’86, were married a few years later. Their purple bona fides are not in question: Kullavanijaya, now retired as principal at an investment management firm, has served on the McCormick Advisory Council for many years, and was recently appointed a University regent for Denver & Rocky Mountains, representing Northwestern at official events in the region. He also lectures at the McCormick School of Engineering. Their son Ben is also a Wildcat who graduated in 2018 – and if that weren’t enough, Ben met his future wife, Lindsay, at Northwestern. (Lindsay’s parents? They met at Northwestern, too. Lindsay’s mother is one of Williams’ sorority sisters.)
It’s an epic amount of quantum entanglement in Northwestern lore.
Noel Kullavanijaya, Wendy Williams and their son Ben at the Northwestern-Ohio State game in 2024 at Wrigley Field.
But before all that, Kullavanijaya and Williams were just two students studying in University Library’s 3 South tower (known also as 3 Green for its olive carpet). “On weekdays, a lot of people would go to the library just to meet,” Kullavanijaya said. Evanston was dry at the time, and the only other social outlet was an occasional “keg in the basement of Bobb, Elder or the fraternities.” The 9:00 study break was a reward for hours of buckling down — and on this night, it meant the two were destined to stand up and walk past the water fountain at the same time.
“After she affectionately accosted me —,” Kullavanijaya began.
“Accosted you?” Williams interjected. “I just made a comment!”
“— I was sitting in the lounge,” Kullavanijaya continued. “She walked past with her red hair and her backpack. That’s when I asked my fraternity brother, ‘Who is that? Because she just made fun of my jeans.”
With her identity confirmed, he soon placed a call to the one phone in Williams’ sorority house
Williams told the caller, “I don’t know who you are. I’m not going out with you!”
But he soon tried a second time. By then, Williams had asked around about him, and friends who knew Kullavanijaya told her, “Yeah, yeah, he’s legitimate.”
So she took a chance and accepted his invitation to dinner.
“I’m from Thailand, and being Asian I wanted to see if she knew how to use chopsticks,” Kullavanijaya said. So he took her to Phoenix Inn, the only Chinese restaurant in Evanston at that time. “I said to myself, if she knows chopsticks, she’s OK.”
“I’m from Texas and barely knew what Asian food was,” Williams recalled. But she had one stroke of luck: Her freshman year roommate was Korean, and had told her, “If there’s one thing I’m going to do, it’s to teach you how to use chopsticks.”
“By the way, we don’t use chopsticks in Thailand, we use spoons,” Kullavanijaya added with a laugh. “I just wanted to see what she knew.”
What they both soon knew is that they were a lifelong match.
Because of that chance meeting, “the libraries will always have a special spot for me,” Kullavanijaya said. He’s also sentimental about those jeans, which he has kept to this day. “They are pretty gross. They’ve got holes everywhere! Maybe they’re in style now?”
Wendy and Noel celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary later this year.