Maryland Love Connection: Cole Farrand and Sarah Calta

Cole Farrand and Sarah Calta’s Maryland love story began before Sarah officially started school at Maryland and has continued to grow over the course of more than a decade.

The summer before Sarah’s freshman year as a Maryland softball player, a couple of mutual friends introduced her to Cole, a standout linebacker coming off a season where he tied for the team lead with 78 total tackles as a sophomore. The two instantly connected and shortly after planned a double-date with a couple they both knew. 

“It was a set-up,” Sarah recalled. "An actual set-up. And it worked.” 

As luck would have it, the power went out on the double-date, but Cole and Sarah weren’t fazed. Instead, the couples made it work, spending the night playing Charades and eventually watching Finding Nemo.

“It wasn’t the ideal set-up, but we made the most of it and had a great first date,” Cole said. “I think it kinda set the tone for the rest of our relationship.”

The pair officially started dating that July, just one week before Cole had to leave for a month for football camp. After that seven days together, Sarah drove Cole to campus and dropped him off, only seeing him once for a few hours over the course of the next 28 days. 

When he came back, the two dove into the busy schedules of their respective sports at Maryland, but still made the time to make it to as many of each other’s games as possible in College Park. 

In December of 2014, a year-and-a-half after the couple started dating, Cole graduated from Maryland and went to New Jersey to begin training for the NFL. For the next two-and-a-half years, as Sarah continued to grow into an All-Big Ten softball star and Cole continued his professional career, the latter would frequent the Amtrak and the Union Station subway to make the trek back to College Park for short visits.

“I definitely became a rewards member wherever I could for all those transportations,” Cole said. “We were committed to seeing each other whenever we could make it work with our schedules.”

When the two couldn’t be together in person, they would begin FaceTiming at about 10 pm each night, stay on the call while they both fell asleep, and not hang up until the next morning around 5 am when one of their alarms went off.

“That was the only time we could talk, Sarah said. “We were barely able to even text during the day, we were both just so busy with our different sport schedules.” 

“The long-distance was definitely hard, but we made it work and we grew from it in the end,” Cole added.

With Sarah set to graduate in the spring of 2017, the two began to look ahead to their future together as adults—a future that would start in Atlanta, Georgia.

Sarah knew she wanted to go to chiropractor school and, early in her senior year, knew Atlanta would be where she would go to further her education. A few months before she moved down there, Cole went down to get settled in the first phase of his post-NFL professional life. 

After graduation, Sarah moved into her own apartment there and the two finally got to end the long-distance aspect of their relationship.

“When we moved down to Georgia, at that point, we had been long-distance for longer than we had been together,” Sarah said. “We spent a year and a half together at Maryland, and then we were long-distance for two-and-a-half years.”

“We used to always say, “Wouldn’t it be nice to see each other for more than three day-stints at a time? And then that finally happened,” Cole added.

On Dec. 15, 2018, the couple took the next big step in their journey. 

As the two boarded a plane to Atlantis along with Sarah’s parents for her annual birthday trip, Cole had an engagement ring hidden deep in his backpack. 

“There was no way I was separating with that thing on the flight,” he recalled with a laugh.

Cole knew he was going to propose that same night after they got in, having it perfectly planned for the two to go down to the beach at sunset where he would pop the question before joining her parents for a nice dinner.

Of course, Sarah had other plans—taking extra long to get ready and saying she didn’t want to go down to the beach before dinner. Eventually, after some persuasion, Cole managed to get her out of the room and hustled themselves down to the beach.

“He was walking us so, so fast to get to the beach,” Sarah recalled. “But I still had no clue what was going on until right as we got there and I saw the candles. I didn’t even see the photographer.”

A big part of the reason Sarah had no inkling that a proposal was happening was because Cole was supposed to ask her father for her hand in marriage that Thanksgiving, but told Sarah that he didn’t in order to throw her off track. 

“I was mad at him for that,” Sarah said. “He said he chickened out and I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And then, of course, I learned later he was just trying to throw me off.”

The two quickly decided on a long engagement, opting to push the wedding off until Sarah had completed school and received her doctorate degree. 

As Cole puts it, “We had already been together for six years at that point, so we figured, ‘What’s another two?”

The two set the date for the summer of 2020—right as COVID hit. The couple pivoted and had a small, intimate ceremony with immediate family only followed by a reception in Cole’s parents’ backyard with the same guests. 

“We just hung out, had some great food and played cornhole,” Cole said. “It was really nice. It was super-lowkey, but I loved it.”

Still, Sarah remained set on eventually having the big wedding she dreamed of at the Hotel Hershey in Hershey, PA, with all their friends and extended family in attendance.

So, for the next couple of years, the two planned a wedding—while already being married.

“I used to always refer to her as “my wife” after the first wedding, and then Sarah would always say to people, ‘Oh we’re having our wedding in May.’ I was like, ‘Are we married or not married? It was definitely a funny situation there.”

In May of 2022, Sarah got the wedding she always dreamed of—and it lived up to all the hype.

“The whole experience was incredible,” she said. “It was just the best. It was an all-day thing and we made the most of it. And everyone had a great time.” 

For the (kind of) newlyweds, the crux of that foundation that led to their wedding day can be traced back to their time together at Maryland.

“I feel like our marriage was built on such a strong foundation,” Cole said. “We spent the year-and-a-half together at Maryland and it made us strong enough to do the two-and-a-half years of long distance. And then we did four years in a different state. We literally went through everything together.”

“We grew up together,” Sarah added. “It’s been 10 years now. I was only 18 when we met now and we’re both thriving as professionals and so is our relationship.”