AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
A wedding announcement in yesterday's New York Times caught our eye. It was pretty average - for the Times, at least.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
The bride grew up in Bedford Corners, New York.
CORNISH: The groom, in Philadelphia.
BLOCK: They met in grad school, at Oxford.
CORNISH: Last night, they not only made the leap into marriage, they also took a new name - not your average hyphenation.
CARA ROCK-SINGER: Hi. I'm Cara Rock-Singer.
AARON ROCK-SINGER: And I'm Aaron Rock-Singer.
CARA, AARON ROCK-SINGER: (in unison) The Rock-Singers.
BLOCK: That's right. Cara Singer married Aaron Rock. Earlier today, we reached the Rock-Singers in a car, on their way to catch a flight to the Canadian Rockies for their honeymoon.
CORNISH: Mrs. Rock-Singer recalled when she first told her friends about her new beau.
CARA ROCK-SINGER: This new guy was tall, Jewish; and if we get married one day, we'll be the Rock-Singers. And then that was kind of a joke for, you know, two and half years. And we sort of planned that when we got married, we would just keep our names.
AARON ROCK-SINGER: And then we thought of what it would mean to have the same name. And we had a couple concerns. The first is that we're both Ph.D. students. So when we each publish books, we were concerned that no one would take us seriously.
CORNISH: Then again, they thought a professor named Rock-Singer might be a draw in a course catalog.
BLOCK: And then, there's always the question of the little Rock-Singers.
CARA ROCK-SINGER: Well, at first we thought that our nerdy kids might be made fun of. And then we were like, actually, you really can't make - this just makes me more awesome.
AARON ROCK-SINGER: You know, kids are always going to be teased for something. But I think that we can train our kids to respond pretty well, to any teasing about their last name.
CARA ROCK-SINGER: (LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: For now, the couple is giddy remembering last night's reception.
AARON ROCK-SINGER: The bandleader said, "Welcome the Rock-Singers."
CARA ROCK-SINGER: And then we walked out and had our first dance to a song by The Weepies called "Somebody Loved."
AARON ROCK-SINGER: Our lives are far too mundane to be dancing to famous rock singers.
CARA ROCK-SINGER: (LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: Something tells us the Rock-Singers' lives will be anything but mundane.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROCK 'N ROLL SINGER")
BLOCK: This is NPR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
