50 Stories for 50 Years: Rita and Attila: The ASSIST Marriage (Class of ‘93)

July 13, 2022

To celebrate our 50th anniversary year during 2018/19, we collected stories and profiles of people and institutions that have helped us build our organization, which first began as one person’s dream in 1968. We will feature one story per week on our blog. Please enjoy these “50 for 50” profiles featuring ASSIST’s dedicated board members, dynamic staff, welcoming host families and enthusiastic ASSIST Scholars.

Rita and Attila
Hungary, Kent Denver Country Day School and Williston Northampton School

ASSIST gave us more than a wonderful year in the US: it widened our horizons, we made new friends and an American family, we mastered the English language, and I received a direction to pursue at university. But it was all colored by one other result that we can truly say changed our lives.

I did not realize in the spring of 1992 how lucky I was when I received the notification: I won a scholarship to spend a year in Denver in the next academic year! It had only been 3 years since the collapse of communism in Hungary, and I could not even imagine how much this year would change my life.

In August of that year I boarded the plane first to Zurich, then to Boston, where the orientation was to take place. There were 16 more Hungarian students on the plane with me (the largest group of students from Hungary ever since). I remember the first day in the Great USA: the first bus ride, the first evening and dinner at St. Mark’s School… and the first time I spotted a particularly beautiful girl: Rita from Eger, Hungary. She had curly reddish-brown hair and beautiful eyes. She was a bit outspoken, but so am I, so we found ourselves debating over something.

The three days at orientation passed, and I found myself on another plane, this time bound for Denver. Although we Hungarians exchanged some letters during that year, we did not speak nor meet each other (remember, this was not even pre-Facebook, but pre-Internet times!). I saw her again in 1993 after we came back to Hungary and the group decided to spend a weekend together. We spent the whole night talking by the campfire. By that time, I already knew I loved her, but she was in a relationship.

As the years passed by, ASSIST held a reunion every year they came for the interviews in Hungary. I went to every single one of them, but there were fewer and fewer who came from my class in each year. Rita never to be seen, either. Then the year 1998 came, which turned out to be the last one before ASSIST pulled out of Hungary for 5 years.

I went to the reunion as usual, but Rita, who had been studying at university in Budapest by then, told her mother she wouldn’t go. “You have to go, my darling. You never know who you’re going to meet” she told her daughter, and she finally agreed to show up.

The rest is history. I asked her out, but she was reluctant to say yes, claiming we wouldn’t last a month… That was 21 years ago, and we’ve been living happily married ever since, with 3 beautiful kids. Their age is 14, 12 and 5. We wouldn’t have met if it we hadn’t won that scholarship. Thank you, ASSIST!

About Attila and Rita:
Attila Náfrádi and Rita Sipos were both members of the ASSIST Class of 1993 from Budapest, Hungary. Attila attended Kent Denver Country Day School in Colorado; Rita attended the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Attila went on to study at ELTE University Budapest and has worked as an air traffic controller, a head simulator at HungaroControl, and a Business Development Executive at Adacel. Rita also attended ELTA University Budapest, where she earned a M.S. in Biology and Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Microbiology. She has spent her career as a researcher at ELTE University and as Head of Laboratory at BIOMI DNA Laboratory. The couple lives in Budapest with their three children.