Finding their match: Fourth-year students reflect on becoming doctors as a couple
M4s Ashley Parkhurst and Connor McKee met on the first day of medical school orientation. Now engaged, they’re hoping to match together for residency.
The first time Ashley Parkhurst and Connor McKee met, they didn’t actually speak to each other. It was at a group meal on the first day of orientation for VCU School of Medicine’s M.D. program, and while they each noticed one another across the table, it wasn’t until the next day that they started chatting. Parkhurst noticed that McKee was playing a game on his laptop instead of taking notes during a session, and when she leaned over and asked what he was doing, he whispered back, “Winning.”
Thus began their playful banter, and the rest is history.
Now, after experiencing nearly all of medical school side by side, Parkhurst and McKee live together with their two golden retrievers and will tie the knot in an outdoor wedding ceremony in April. But before they make it to the wedding, they have to get through the residency match, an already arduous rite of passage made even more competitive and complicated by applying as a couple.
Participating in the National Residency Matching Program as a couple allows two people to link their rank order lists for the purpose of obtaining positions in the same geographic location. Couples like Parkhurst and McKee match to the most preferred pair of programs on their lists where each partner has been offered a position — that could mean matching into programs at the same institution or at different institutions that are in the same city or region.
Along with M4s across the U.S., they’ll find out Monday, March 17 whether they matched at all, and receive their official residency placement results when they open their envelopes at the Class of 2025’s celebration on Friday, March 21.
"It’s been a wild ride,” Parkhurst said. “Along the way, we got two perfect golden retrievers, got engaged, and somehow survived M3 schedules at the same time. Now, with Match Day, graduation, and our wedding all happening within months of each other, I couldn’t imagine a better person to take on this next adventure with."
