AMANDA DEDIE
Staff Writer
Michael Markham and I-Fei Chen-Markham are both Fredonia professors and one of the handful of married couples on campus. And although they didn’t meet through Fredonia, their lives and love have brought them here together.
Both individuals work for the School of Music, though they reportedly don’t often cross paths during the day. Michael is a professor of music history, instructing Music Major Survey as well as other music-related seminars and, therefore, spends all day teaching. I-Fei, on the other hand, is a staff accompanist and clarinet professor for the School of Music and spends much of her time rehearsing with students.
The two met in 1994 at the Peabody Conservatory of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and although they then went on to obtain different degrees at different universities, they continued dating long distance and communicating cross-country. They eventually reunited and married on July 18, 2003 — nine years after they met.
“I was second year, and she was first year [when we met]. I was a lazy slob, and she was an annoyingly efficient nerd who was always wagging her finger at people who weren’t working hard enough, so I didn’t really like her much,” said Michael. “She was like Hermione Granger: she was always nitpicking. I was like, ‘What a nerd!’ We started dating maybe a year-and-a-half later. I don’t know how it happened. We just kept hanging out, and then we decided that whatever we were doing was a date at that point,” laughed Michael.
The Markhams agree that binge watching TV shows on Netflix is what they most enjoy doing together. They’re currently watching “Hannibal” — “She likes really gory stuff,” shared Michael — but they’ve also made their way through “Deadwood,” “Homeland,” “Dexter” and “Breaking Bad.”
“We love to go hunting around for old used books or records,” said I-Fei via email. “We used to do that a lot when we lived in Berkeley, but we still try to find time to do that here and in Buffalo or Toronto when we can.”
Although Michael didn’t appreciate I-Fei’s quirkiness when they first met, the couple agrees they’ve come to love certain qualities about each other.
“Unbelievable stamina and patience,” said Michael, describing I-Fei. “She’s probably the only human being in the world able to put up with me and could do what she does here. She’s playing 60 students juries — that’s 60 sets of music she has to learn and rehearse with them. It’s incredible. There are few other people on the planet that could play that much at that level without falling apart.”
He joked, “She’s like ‘the Terminator.’ She likes to cook. She does all that and still manages to come home and cook really healthy Taiwanese food, which is probably the main reason I’m under 300 pounds.”
I-Fei replied, “What I like the most about Michael is that he is a perfectionist,” despite his initial comment of being a self-proclaimed slob.
The interviews, which were conducted separately, just continued to show how alike and on the same page Michael and I-Fei are. Both of them, not knowing the opinion of the other, had the same idea of a perfect date.
“We’d probably go back to San Francisco. She loves it there. We’d just wander the city and visit all the old haunts, like the bookstores,” said Michael.
Similarly, I-Fei said, “Our favorite date in the past was to go to Andrew Molera State Park in California. We would love to go back there and hike around. [There are] big cliffs along the beach. [It’s] very cold and rocky but very beautiful, and no one is around. It’s very quiet and empty.”
Maybe California can be planned for their anniversary next year. But in between anniversaries, how do they keep romance alive, despite their busy and conflicting schedules?
Michael replied, “We make sure that at the end of a long week, there is a moment where we are alone, the world is shut out and there’s a certain sense of breathing out and knowing that we are supposed to be there.”