Tabi Walters
Nineteen-year-old U-M student Selena Cooper and seventy-nine-year-old Mary Gliedt meet up most weeks to hang out and chat at Gliedt’s apartment at Brecon Village Senior Living. Over the past year, even though sixty years separate them in age, they’ve become friends.
Perfect Pair brought Cooper and Gliedt together. Founded in 2020—when the pandemic intensified loneliness and a lack of connection—the volunteer program matches college students with older adults for weekly visits based on shared interests. Initially, virtual visits helped combat social isolation and foster intergenerational relationships. When it was safe, the Perfect Pairs began to meet in person at assisted and independent living homes.
Its founder, Emily Lerner, was a U-M medical student when she started the organization; she’s now an internal medicine resident with a focus on geriatrics at the University of Washington. Growing up, she made friends with the residents at the assisted living home where her mother worked. In college, she realized she missed those relationships.
“I really felt a lack of mentorship, friendships, and guidance … how age-siloed we are,” she explains. “People who had been professors, veterans, and had done amazing, meaningful things were fully separated from society. Understanding comes from community and connection … both of those have been cut off.”
Gliedt describes herself as “nontraditional”—she’s spent over twenty-five years practicing meditation and has had careers as a speech therapist and counselor in Colorado, Minnesota, and Singapore. Cooper says Gliedt’s slower pace helps her navigate the whirlwind of college life. “It’s nice because I come here and we talk. … She’s taught me the value of being okay doing nothing.”
Lerner challenges the common assumption that Perfect Pair’s older adults reap the lion’s share of its benefits. “Our younger adults actually gain a little bit more because there’s also a lot of isolation in college,” she says. “It really goes both ways, creating that connection for both sides.”
Since its founding, Perfect Pair has expanded to thirty-five campuses in twenty-three states, with five more programs on the way. But for Gliedt and Cooper, the program’s success isn’t measured in chapters or cities. It’s measured in friendship. “Isn’t it great that two people of different ages can be friends?” says Gliedt, smiling.
“We’re totally friends,” says Cooper. “I’m excited to have someone in Ann Arbor who’s like family.”