Roadrunners in Love

A campus connection that endures

Walking with her husband while visiting the UTSA campus this past summer, Sonia M. Moncayo Marroquin ’00 looked on as Armando Marroquin ’98 and their three boys held hands, forming a chain. Then she snapped a picture. It was the first time the couple had walked around the university with their sons, showing them different parts of each other’s past. She couldn’t help but think about how everything worked out.

“It was actually a very surreal experience,” she says. “I thought, I can’t believe this is happening -- just because of how everything was falling into place.”

Sonia, then pre-med, and Armando, then a business major, struck up only a friendship when they met in 1998 through a friend. But they only struck up a friendship. “It wasn’t love at first sight,” he says, with his wife adding a laugh.

Both were in the Greek system, but Sonia admired how active her future husband was in student and university life, something completely different from her.

The two were part of a circle of friends who kept in touch after graduation, even as they all moved around the state. He went on to law school in Houston, and in 2000 she moved to Lubbock to attend Texas Tech to finish her master’s in occupational therapy.

A couple years went by and the two grew closer, beginning to date in 2002. Within months she was diagnosed with an operable brain tumor, and the fact that he helped her through the ordeal made their bond stronger, she says.

Now married with three boys, ages 4 to 8, they are busier than ever. Both are self-employed. And once again, Armando is getting involved with university life. He’s heading up the new McAllen chapter of the UTSA Alumni Association.

He says he hopes their sons leave home for the college experience, but if it’s not UTSA, they’ll understand.

“But they have a Rowdy stuffed animal,” Sonia adds. “Go ’Runners!”