Jen sat in the BYU Varsity Theatre eager to learn on her first day of class in the accounting junior core. Rod Hinze was also in class that day, but he found it hard to focus on academics once he saw Jen. When the teacher announced that the students would be forming two-person teams, Rod knew who his partner would be—Jen didn’t have a chance to look around before he was leaping over the seats to get to her. “I looked for the cutest girl in the class and Jen was sitting two rows in front of me, so I literally jumped over the two rows and sat next to her,” Rod says. “She was a little surprised when I asked her to be my partner, but she said yes.”
After class Rod and Jen walked to the Tanner Building. Not focused on class anymore, Jen was surprised at how cute and nice Rod was. The two didn’t meet again until a chance encounter in a computer lab where Rod had misplaced a disk drive. (Jen swears it was a ploy.) Rod set up a date. One Peter Breinholt concert in Provo Canyon, some cheesecake brownies, and a glimpse of Rod’s “super awesome” arms later, Jen was in love. “Our first date was magical,” Jen says. “I don’t think I’d ever driven through the canyon before. It was the end of September with all of the leaves turning pretty colors, and it was a beautiful Provo Canyon night. The date was really, really sweet.”
The couple began spending time together between classes in the Tanner Building, and by the end of the semester the relationship was getting serious. Jen didn’t think Rod was close to proposing, so she got a little more than she’d expected when she went to visit his family in Arizona during Christmas break. Rod proposed on New Year’s Eve as they rode in a gondola at a local resort; the gondolier began singing in Italian when Jen said yes. “I had lots of dreams about the perfect man for me, but I didn’t know that someone like Rod even existed,” Jen says. “He was kind, motivated, and interested in me. I’d never met anyone like him before.”
Rod and Jen married 29 April 1999 and both went on to receive MAcc degrees from BYU and work at Goldman Sachs. The couple has four children, ages nine to two. Rod recently started a hedge fund and loves to play tennis. Jen is a CPA and has worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in addition to Goldman Sachs. She is currently at home full-time with the kids. The family enjoys spending time reading, playing soccer and tennis, and rooting for BYU sports teams.
Read more love stories in the Winter 2014 article “Joint Ventures.”
