As the month that celebrates Valentine’s Day and our loved ones winds down, we present a Cal State LA love story.

It is the shared story of Ruby Rodriguez and Michael Garcia, who met at Cal State LA as student assistant employees, started dating after being in a class together, and married after graduating with their bachelor’s degrees. They now both work at the university.

There is a third element to this story—Cal State LA itself.

“We really care about the students and the people we work with,” said Rodriguez. “It makes me so emotional. In our personal lives, we all have struggles. I want to be in a safe place, a haven, and Cal State LA provides that. We’re here because we want to grow, inspire others, and put Cal State LA’s name out there.”

Rodriguez, who has held several positions at Cal State LA, is currently the workforce planning coordinator with Human Resources Management, and Garcia is the equipment maintenance assistant with One-Stop Financial Services.

While Rodriguez, 38, was a first-generation college student, Garcia, 35, and his family have a long history with Cal State LA. A list of relatives, including his mother Cristela Escareno, call Cal State LA their alma mater, and various family members have also been employed at Cal State LA dating back to the 1980s.

In fact, it was Garcia’s two aunts, who worked for Student Loan Services and Collection Services for more than 40 years each, who first saw the potential love connection between Rodriguez and Garcia.

Rodriguez worked with Garcia’s aunts, Tina Mimiaga and Lupe Escareno, as a student employee before Garcia joined the team as a freshman in the 2009 fall semester. Rodriguez, a junior at the time, and Garcia became work friends and discussed a lot of things during their shifts, including the people they were dating.

“My aunties saw something and brought it to our attention,” Garcia said. “We realized that there was something there.”

Rodriguez tells a different story. “I was in denial,” she said with a smile, adding that she considered Garcia as more of a little brother at the time.

“She put me in the friend zone,” Garcia said.

As a rule, “coworkers were off limits” to Rodriguez. But things started to change when she and Garcia ended up in the same geology class together in the 2010 spring semester. They studied together and had a chance to learn more about each other outside of work.

Garcia went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in sociology, with minors in criminal justice and gerontology, while Rodriguez earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration with an option in human resources management. They both graduated in 2012.

Rodriguez recalled, “In the classroom setting, I got to know a different side of him, a more personal side instead of just a co-worker. We would have lunch together and we would study, and I started thinking, this is a really kind and caring person.”

So, it turns out Aunties Tina and Lupe’s instincts were spot on.

For their first date, Garcia chose to take Rodriguez to Folliero’s Italian Food and Pizza in Highland Park, the neighborhood where he grew up.

“It was the first restaurant my mom ever ate at, and she would take us there when we were little,” said Garcia. “So, it was sentimental; it meant a lot to me.”

By their third date on April 6, 2010, they became exclusive. Exactly three years later, after they had both graduated from Cal State LA, Garcia proposed while on a camping trip at Lytle Creek in the San Gabriel Mountains with about 30 members from both sides of their families—including parents, grandparents, godparents, siblings, and aunts and uncles—bearing witness.

Their engagement, however, had some challenges. About a month after the proposal, Rodriguez’s mother, Silvia Rodriguez, suffered a heart attack and required open-heart surgery.

“Our engagement was that shocking,” said Garcia, who can now joke about his mother-in-law’s health issues. At the time, however, he and Rodriguez knew that Silvia’s rehab would be their priority.

Rodriguez took a leave of absence from her job at Cal State LA to nurse her mother back to health. Garcia visited them regularly.

“We spent as much time together as we could,” Rodriguez said, “and we realized how much we truly loved each other and supported each other through this. Why wait? We didn’t need to have a big party and do all the planning [for a wedding]. We decided to get married. In the end, it’s about unity between two people.”

They wed in August 2013 on Garcia’s 23rd birthday at the Norwalk Courthouse. Rodriguez then continued caring for her mother at her parents’ Maywood home, while Garcia returned to Highland Park.

The young newlyweds would live separately for a year until Silvia had sufficiently built up her strength.

Their year living apart reaffirmed their commitment not only to each other but to their families. Rodriguez and Garcia are both family-oriented, and their family members have always played a big part of their relationship timeline—from Aunties Tina and Lupe’s matchmaking to the couple caring for Silvia, and from the dozens in attendance for the proposal to Garcia’s father, Andrew Garcia, burning a CD of romantic songs for the couple to set the mood for its first date.

And then there is their other family at Cal State LA.

Rodriguez and Garcia know plenty of faculty and staff, and they are also both involved with the California State University Employees Union.

Their respective positions allow them to meet and befriend plenty of staff, faculty, and students. Garcia says his commitment to the university has earned him the nickname “Mayor of Cal State LA.”

But Rodriguez and Garcia do not just work at Cal State LA; they also play there. They often attend campus events such as Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Great American Crooners” concert at The Luckman on Valentine’s Day weekend.

Rodriguez says she looks forward every year to attending Convocation.

“It inspires me to find out what our goals are for the year,” she said.

Rodriguez and Garcia, who reside in Maywood, plan to get their master’s degrees, likely in public administration, at Cal State LA. They want to go through the program together to study together, just as they had done as undergraduates.

And the couple hopes to extend their family ties to Cal State LA to the next generation. Rodriguez and Garcia have twin 8-year-old girls, Amber and Hazel, and mom and dad are already singing the praises of Cal State LA to them.

“We have roots here,” Garcia said. “Ruby and I met here, we graduated from here, and we stayed here as staff. Cal State LA is our home. It’s our home away from home. It means so much to us because of what we’ve built here.”

California State University, Los Angeles is the premier comprehensive public university in the heart of Los Angeles. Cal State LA is ranked number one in the United States for the upward mobility of its students. Cal State LA is dedicated to engagement, service, and the public good, offering nationally recognized programs in science, the arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education, and the humanities. Founded in 1947, the University serves more than 22,000 students and has more than 260,000 distinguished alumni.