Aggie Tennis Pro Invests In Marketing Grad Students

How did you two meet?

Misia: We crossed paths briefly when he came to the University of Illinois for a tournament. I had a friend who knew Austin from the Florida junior circuit, and she told me she had a crush on him. She asked me to reach out to him on Facebook for her, but he ended up keeping in touch with me.

How important is it to your relationship that you both have high-level tennis experience?

Austin: I think it’s important because Misia understands the difficulty of the travel schedule, how tennis players deal with preparation and the competitiveness. I would argue she’s almost more competitive than me.

Misia: But we don’t talk strategy. We don’t talk tennis at dinner.

Austin: Yeah. One player in the family is enough.

In 2018, you moved to College Station so Misia could pursue her master’s degree. How did that happen?

Misia: We were living in Los Angeles, and I was working four jobs to make ends meet. I knew I wanted to go back to school, but I didn’t want to put my parents in that kind of debt. When Austin talked about Texas A&M, I looked up the business school and saw its high ratings and knew it didn’t cost as much as UCLA. In my admissions letter, I learned my offer at Mays included a scholarship, even though I hadn’t asked for one. That gave me in-state tuition, which cut the cost by probably more than half. After being a student-athlete, I always wanted to put 100% into school, and that scholarship is the only reason I could finally do that.