Trevor Bazley and Lexxa Kever always knew they would find their way back to campus—and each other
Photo by Kendra Anderson
The first time Lexxa Kever entered Room 300 at the Daniels College of Business, she was flustered.
Running late, she scrambled into the third-floor classroom, at the north end of the building. Her eyes found one of the few empty seats in the back row.
“I ran up and said, ‘Hey, can I sit here?’” Lexxa remembers saying to her classmate, Trevor Bazley. “I don’t think I even waited for him to answer and just sat down.”
This time around though, on Saturday, Sept. 2, she was perfectly at peace, walking calmly down the aisle on her wedding day.
In front of friends and family—seated, of course, behind desks in swivel chairs—Lexxa (MBA 2015) and Trevor (BS 2014, MBA 2014) said their vows. Their officiants stood at the classroom lectern, beside a white board that displayed “Mr. & Mrs. Bazley” in dry erase marker.
“Despite knowing that we were in a classroom and despite it still pretty much looking like a classroom, it no longer felt like a classroom to me,” Trevor said. “It felt like where we were supposed to get married. It took on this new purpose.”
LUV 1101: Intro to Love
After their initial, somewhat-abrupt introduction, Lexxa and her new friend, Trevor, got to know one another. The two MBA students chatted during their intro to accounting class, collaborated on a group project and began spending time together.
Lexxa was social, made easy conversation and was refreshingly direct. Trevor was clever, witty and cute.
“We were friends the whole time, got along and wanted the best for each other,” Lexxa said. “We just weren’t in a relationship.”
So, when Trevor graduated, they went their separate ways.
“We both just had enough individual dreams and goals still that it was important to do those,” he said. “Whether we said it explicitly or not, I think we both knew we would always be in each other’s lives. When the time was right, we would find our way back.”
‘Time for the full effort’
Trevor, who had always dreamed of living in the mountains, took a job as a snowboard instructor at Vail. Lexxa was never one for snow sports. Instead, she found her way home to Arkansas, where she tied her love of entrepreneurship to her love of soccer at a startup company, HappyFeet.
But the two still thought about one another.
One day, out of the blue, one of them (neither can remember who) sent the other a link to a song they were listening to—just like they used to do as grad students. They caught up and continued to communicate.
“It became a sort of tradition of sending each other songs that we liked,” Trevor said. “Slowly, that became sending each other songs that made us think of each other. And, once you hit that point, I feel like there’s no denying that there’s something there.”
Trevor flew Lexxa to Vail for a weekend, intending to tell her how he felt. But they didn’t exactly cut to the chase.
“I don’t think either of us wanted to be the one to say the words, despite it being what we both wanted,” Trevor said.
“So I did,” Lexxa butted in, laughing.
When Lexxa and her parents passed through Colorado that summer, the couple made it official.
“We agreed that there was something there, and we needed to see it out,” Trevor said. Lexxa agreed: “It was time for the full effort.”
A long family history
Trevor Bazley’s childhood memories have a distinctly crimson tint. His grandparents attended the University of Denver. So did his uncle. His parents met there. His sister followed his footsteps to campus.
His dad, John, taught in the School of Accountancy for 35 years. Trevor can recall afternoons and evenings in his dad’s office or classroom, playing with toy cars while Executive MBA students talked about amortization. His dad even authored the textbook Trevor and Lexxa used in their introductory course. (“I remember asking [Trevor] if he could give me all of the answers to the homework because of that,” Lexxa remembered, “and he said no.”)
John Bazley arrived in the U.S. from England when he was 18, eventually earning a PhD in accounting from the University of Minnesota. Colorado’s natural beauty lured him to Denver, where he also found a home at DU.
As a teacher, John was revered not only for his intelligence, but his deep commitment to his pupils. Today, a scholarship in his name helps graduate students in the School of Accountancy afford their education. Since the fund’s inception, 24 “Bazley Scholars” have received assistance, based on academic merit or demonstrated financial need.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that teaching was his passion and his life’s work,” Trevor said. “His whole life was his students and spreading the good word of accounting to the world.”
John Bazley died in 2011, not long before Trevor and Lexxa met. As the couple pondered wedding venues, a classroom seemed like a perfect way to honor his memory.
“He would just love that on our day of committing to each other for life it happened at a place where my life as their son basically started,” Trevor said. “He would think that was the coolest thing.”
Photo by Kendra Anderson
Saying ‘I DU’
When Kever contacted the University to ask about a nontraditional venue for a wedding ceremony, Mikalah Guyton and the DU Events staff made life easy. Together, they toured the classroom and figured out parking. They even created a “bridal suite” in the classroom next door, in which Lexxa could get ready.
On the day of the wedding, they adorned the desks with photos taken throughout their relationship. Postcards they exchanged over the years sat atop metal stands. They chuckled when, in their formalwear before the ceremony, they walked past a maintenance worker preparing the building for the upcoming academic year.
“The whole day was so exciting,” Lexxa said. “I didn’t have a single moment of panic or hesitation or doubt. I was so ready to make that walk.”
In a place that already holds so many special memories, Bazley and Kever are confident their wedding day will not be their last time walking the halls.
In the future, Trevor said, he looks forward to taking his kids to campus, pointing out the building or taking them inside Room 300.
“It’s an undeniable part of our lives,” he said. “[There’s] my family history, but now, having met Lexxa there, it will just continue the tradition.”
Related Posts
