She’s a Blue Devil. He’s a Tar Heel. The Final Four game is on their wedding day.
For Zach Boehmer, a die-hard Tar Heel fan, and Kelly Sullivan, a forever Blue Devil, Saturday is not just one of the biggest games in college basketball history.
It’s also their wedding day.
When they first learned that the Final Four of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament was happening the same day they’d chosen for their wedding, they didn’t think it would be an issue.
Sullivan had considered the possibility that a talented Duke team, at least, might make it this far. But neither of them anticipated what is now just around the corner: longtime rivals Duke and North Carolina, facing off for the first time in the NCAA tournament, with a spot in the national title game on the line.
“We’ve just sort of started to embrace it as fate,” Boehmer said. “I mean, what are the chances?”
A rivalry romance
Boehmer and Sullivan, both 28, first met in college, but they didn’t become a couple until after they graduated. On their first date, Sullivan mentioned that she was a Duke fan. Boehmer wanted a second date, so he decided not to say anything.
But when he went to pay for their meal, he pulled out a UNC wallet, and the jig was up.
“That was four years ago, and we’ve been battling it out ever since,” says Sullivan.
There’s not a whole lot of room for compromise between Duke and UNC fans, who pride themselves on belonging to one of the most storied rivalries in college sports. Luckily, that’s something the couple says they established early on.
Sullivan has a Duke blanket; Boehmer has a Tar Heel quilt. Sullivan’s mom gifts Boehmer new clothes in hopes that he will phase out his UNC gear, which he isn’t allowed to wear when he comes over.
Sullivan’s friends, who have become Blue Devil fans by association, threw her a Duke-themed bachelorette party a couple of weeks ago, the same day as UNC’s second-round matchup against Baylor. Boehmer showed up and crashed the party decked out in a Vince Carter jersey.
“It about ruined my day,” Sullivan jokes.
The rivalry has even led to a debate over naming their future children. Boehmer likes the name Jackson for a boy. Sullivan is fine with that name, under one condition: his middle name has to start with a J, too, so they can call him “JJ” after JJ Redick.
“I think, one day, I’m going to convince him to be a Duke fan,” Sullivan says.
Says Boehmer: “She’ll never convince me of that.”
Lifelong fans
Tar Heels and Blue Devils are everywhere, and Boehmer and Sullivan are no exception. They live in Iowa, and neither of them attended either school, but they’ve been hardcore fans of their respective teams for almost as long as they can remember.
Boehmer, whose twin cousins introduced him to UNC basketball as a kid, grew up watching players like Tyler Hansbrough cut down the nets. Sullivan and her family fell in love with the program around the time JJ Redick was dominating the league.
Boehmer and Sullivan are both the competitive type, so they rarely opt to watch rivalry games together. When they do watch as a couple — and it’s only happened twice — it’s in complete and utter silence. But on Saturday, they don’t really have a choice. They hope to project the game up on a big screen at their reception venue and watch it with friends and family, who have joked that it will be their first test as a married couple.
“I’m dreading it a little because, you know, I planned a wedding and I paid vendors and I had a mindset of how it would go and then all of a sudden, there’s a little bit of a wrench in it,” Sullivan says. “But at the end of the day, our allegiance is to Duke and North Carolina, so we’ll make it work.”
Of the two of them, Sullivan is the bigger trash talker, so she might have to step into a back room and watch it privately, depending on how the game goes. She’s fairly confident Duke will win the game, so she’s going to try her best to refrain from bragging about it on their wedding night.
“But I will the next day, and every day after,” she says.
Boehmer, on the other hand, isn’t sure which team will emerge victorious, but he mostly just wants the day to go well for his soon-to-be-wife.
“Especially on our wedding day, it’s more about her than me,” he says. “Obviously, I want nothing more than Carolina to win. But if they lose, I’ll be happy for her just because it’s our wedding, and I want her to have a good time.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "She’s a Blue Devil. He’s a Tar Heel. The Final Four game is on their wedding day.."
