With Valentine’s Day weekend quickly approaching, love seems to be all around for some. Experts have watched our generation from the outside through hookups and Tinder and online dating. But for these four couples and several others on the campus, it is possible to find love — and a life partner — in college.

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Deanna Berardi and Burkley Patterson

Burkley Patterson planned three different marriage proposals before one finally worked.

“What doesn’t make these [engagement stories] is all the failed attempts,” he said, after his fiance-at-last Deanna Berardi told the story of his proposal.

First, he tried to bring Berardi to a volcano in Kenya, where they’d gone to visit family a year prior, but was stopped by the 2013 terrorist attack.

Then, he worked with a 3-D printer for more than a year to make a scale model of Berardi’s ring out of titanium before the machine malfunctioned.

Finally, he arranged a breakfast picnic aboard a hot air balloon — before the weather killed his careful plans.

He triumphed at last by the bridge where the pair first said “I love you” about three weeks into their then-very new high school relationship. He gave Berardi the tanzanite ring he spent more than a year designing. He brought her to Gramercy Mansion. He planned her a surprise engagement party and a surprise day out with Berardi’s mother, sister and godmother.

“The way that it happened was perfect,” Berardi said.

Why go to such great lengths? Because after seven years, love is still worth it.

The two graduated from this university in 2014 after sharing their entire college careers together. Patterson lived on the campus. Berardi lived off. Sometimes they spent all day together; sometimes they needed space to do homework or binge-watch Netflix.

“One of the best things about our relationship is that we’re both flexible and supportive of each other,” Berardi said.

But isn’t it true that long-term relationships in college hold you back?

“It’s only true if the person you’re with is someone who holds you back,” she said.

That’s why it worked. Patterson and Berardi helped each other grow in college. They shared their values and their life ambitions and supported each other — even through Berardi’s indecision about her major, which she changed three times. 

“You have this person that you can always depend on,” Patterson said.

Berardi chimed in, “Yeah, it’s like having this permanent best friend. I know that he’s always gonna be there. I always have support. I always have a friend. I always have a drinking buddy. I can do pretty much anything, and I know that I’ve got him.”

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Molly Carlson and Kyle Berger

Kyle Berger and Molly Carlson have college romance down to a science.

A great how-we-met story? A soccer game as part of a Christian group they were both in got moved to the tennis courts. That was the first day they played at the same time.

A stellar first date? At the one and only North Campus Luau. 

A perfect engagement? Berger proposed beachside on Aug. 8 (8/8) at 8 p.m. Two girls the couple didn’t know started to cry while witnessing the proposal.

He’s a senior computer science major. She’s a junior secondary education major. They sat together in The Coffee Bar in Stamp Student Union as Rihanna’s “We Found Love” trumpeted over the speakers — an appropriate accompaniment to their retelling of their love story.

The couple said they knew last year that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

“We were dating purposefully — we weren’t just going to date anyone,” Carlson said. Berger was her first boyfriend, and they both knew in their relationship that they “were going to get married or not waste the other person’s time.”

Berger said he thinks most people he knows in relationships are doing exactly what he did: looking for love. He said the love situation in college isn’t hopeless. There’s enough room in college for people who are looking for soul mates, but also space for people who are looking to date around.

“I think it depends what people are really after,” he said.

They said they don’t know too many other engaged couples on the campus, and the ones they do know are older. Berger and Carlson have the support of their family and friends, and they know that’s what really matters. 

What are they doing for Valentine’s Day? Carlson said they “don’t have anything crazy planned” but are looking forward to spending time together.

Until their wedding date — July 11, or 7/11 — Berger said he’s enjoying people’s reactions when he introduces Carlson as his fiancee.

“They’re like, ‘What?’” he said.

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Becky Grissom and Andrew Mengle

Becky Grissom and Andrew Mengle met because of a rose.             

“It’s a really long and complicated story,” said Grissom, a sophomore education major. “I was in a play, Beauty and the Beast, and the mechanical rose needed fixing.”

So, looking to fix this magical prop, Grissom sought out … er, a stranger.

“I contacted this guy I’d never talked to before. Something in me was just like, ‘I’ve just gotta talk to this guy; he’ll know how to fix it,’” Grissom said of the handyman who catalyzed her now four-year relationship with Mengle.

Stranger-handyman-turned-friend Vignesh mentioned Mengle’s friend who liked Grissom’s friend. Both friends needed Grissom and Mengle to make their meeting less of an awkward blind date.

In a dizzying turn of matchmaking events, the friends forced Grissom and Mengle into Facebook fraternization.

“That double-date never happened, but I knew I wanted to meet this girl I had only texted, Facebooked and Skyped once,” said Mengle, a junior at West Point. “I took her out for frozen yogurt the night before her AP U.S. History exam. I suppose you can guess what has happened in the nearly four years since is history.”

Mengle proposed to Grissom in December before the pair headed out to a military ball. Mengle commented on a necklace that Grissom wore for the evening. 

“He asked me if I needed any other jewelry and I said, ‘No,’ but then he got down on one knee and said, ‘What about this?’” Grissom explained.

The two are set to marry after Mengle’s graduation next year. 

“I know that Becky and the trials we have gone through together have taught me more about myself and my surroundings than I could have learned by myself,” Mengle said.

They’re both in the meat of their college careers. They go to different schools. Mengle’s military career path poses challenges. 

And they’re completely OK with it.

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Liora Miller and Gedaliah Knizhnik

When Liora Miller’s roommate Laura Shaposhnikova asked to get manicures with her on Dec. 18, she didn’t think anything special of it, besides a final hurrah with Shaposhnikova, who was graduating that weekend. 

Miller came back to her apartment and Shaposhnikova ran away. Other clues that it would be a special night were around: Her favorite granola bar and Gatorade were on the floor, and a note asked her to open the door.

A ribbon went all around the apartment, which was filled with photos of her relationship. In the bedroom was her boyfriend, Gedaliah Knizhnik, holding the end of the ribbon and a box with a ring in it.

The couple met at a Friday night dinner. Knizhnik knew Miller’s cousin; when Miller sat next to her cousin at the table, Knizhnik was there.

“He very quickly became my best friend and the first person I talk to about anything,” she said.

The couple started dating Nov. 15, 2013, and will marry Dec. 27. Miller is a junior classics major; Knizhnik is a sophomore mechanical engineering major.

The couple are both practicing Jews and have similar values, Miller said, and it’s not too uncommon to marry young in that community. Still, they aren’t marrying hastily, she said; they just didn’t want to wait anymore.

“We have plans of how we are going to pay for things,” Miller said, noting that she and Knizhnik would stay in College Park while they both finished their undergraduate degrees.

She said she feels “a sense of calm and peace” about the engagement — she knows she’s doing the right thing. She said it is possible to find love in college, even in a setting that includes a hookup culture.

“A lot of people are looking for something special and know how to find it, even if it’s not the simple and easiest as, thank God, it’s been for Gedaliah and me,” she said.