The Forty Acres Scholars Program Celebrates Its First Wedding

Joe Levin, BA, BJ ’21, and Ashley Deutser, BA, BBA ’21, Life Members, experienced the kind of meet-cute that would have made Nora Ephron jealous.

The year was 2017, and the romantic setting was the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center on UT’s campus. Forty-five high school seniors were arriving for the Forty Acres Scholars Program’s Finalist Weekend, in hopes of earning the University’s premier full-ride merit scholarship. Ashley and her parents, Brad and Jill, were waiting to check in, sizing up the competition.

“All these kids look pretty nerdy,” Brad, BA ’87, Life Member, declared. “But that kid looks kind of normal.”

“Little did he know Joe was the nerdiest one of them all,” Ashley says, many years later.

This story has become legend in the Deutser and Levin families, the first beat in a love story that in many ways goes much further back, before the Texas Exes got involved. The way Brad tells it, the moment was more charged than simply a stray observation. In his speech at the wedding reception—spoiler alert—he described a strange wave of premonition. That kid is going to be important, he thought, though he also didn’t know how right he was. 

While Ashley was born and raised in Houston, Joe grew up in Los Angeles. Despite his West Coast upbringing, his parents, Helen, BA ’89, Life Member, and Jordan Levin, BS ’89, Outstanding Young Texas Ex, raised Joe as a Longhorns (and Cubs) fan.  

Joe spent lots of time in Houston as a kid, visiting his grandparents’ home on Indian Circle and attending the River Oaks Tennis Tournament. Ashley also went to the tournament every year, and her great-grandparents lived on Indian Circle. She would often visit her cousins in L.A., where her favorite restaurant was Café Vida—Joe’s favorite restaurant growing up.  

So the Forty Acres Scholars Program was just the final shove from a universe that had long been conspiring to bring Joe and Ashley together. The program would also send them around the world together: to study abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, for their junior spring semester.  

“It was so fun to have that adventure together,” Joe says. “For different reasons, Copenhagen was the perfect place for both of us.” In addition to their classwork, extracurricular education included subjects such as porridge—evidently a Danish delicacy—and Scandinavian furniture design.

“We’re both Sevens on the Enneagram, so we love learning and tasting new things,” Ashley says. “We were in a complete flow state, riding bikes around and talking about how perfect everything was there, from the cardamom buns to the coffee, to the celeriac and the beef tartare.”

For those keeping score at home, students who graduated high school in 2017 were in the spring of their junior year in March of 2020. The day that the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic, Joe and Ashley had tickets to a Big Thief concert.  

“The day before, the Danish government said they could still have the concert, but half of the people got randomly put into a five o’clock show, and half, into an eight o’clock show, and the band was just going to play two concerts,” Joe says. “We got tickets for the early show and then went to dinner.” It was the first sunny day in Copenhagen since they’d arrived in the dead of winter.  

“While we were at dinner, the waiter randomly started handing out the checks to everybody,” Joe continues. “Everybody was speaking panic Danish—and people in Denmark don’t really ever raise their voices. We learned that they were shutting down the country, and all foreigners had to leave.” After managing to book flights back to America, which were filling up quickly, they walked out of the restaurant to find that the subway had already been shut down.  

“We did get a call from Whitney [Carter, current program director], being like, ‘Are y’all okay?’” Ashley remembers. (Carter and several Scholars were among the wedding guests.)  

Despite the pandemic, Joe and Ashley graduated the following spring and began their careers in Austin—Joe, as a published author and Emmy-nominated producer, and Ashley, as a consultant bringing her entrepreneurial and strategic experience to clients including her alma mater.    

As their wedding website reads, the next big milestone in the relationship was Ashley’s first visit to Wrigley Field in April 2022: “The Cubs beat the Pirates 21-0. It was the biggest Cubs win since 1945. Joe began to save for a ring.”  

He proposed in August 2025 with a deck of cards customized with doodles by Joe’s younger sister, Haley, and one important question (she said yes!). Event planning was already well within their wheelhouse as consummate hosts at the Cherry Pit, the name Joe and best friend Shaw Butler, BS ’21, Life Member, gave to the Cherrywood bungalow that became the destination for countless tailgates and highly anticipated annual events. It’s the kind of place where everyone is welcome (unless you’re an Aggie) and the barbecue never runs out (thanks to Friend of the Pit Kiolbassa Smoked Meats).  

“We both love to plan parties … [and] come up with an elaborate theme and surprise everyone with fun drinks and crafts and signs,” Ashley says. “The wedding was just like that, being able to have all of our favorite people in the same room and treat them to the most fun weekend ever.”

The pair married over Memorial Day weekend in Houston, with a properly Texan welcome party at J Bar M BBQ. Their flower girls and ring bearers were the children of Ashley’s cousins, one of whom was also a Forty Acres Scholar, while the other was a Texas Excellence awardee, the program at the Texas Exes that predated Forty Acres.  

The reception included a Levin–Deutser family flash mob, and the after-party featured a reproduction of the Cherry Pit’s tiki bar and dueling pianists who dutifully played “The Eyes of Texas.” The best part, however, was witnessing how much the newlyweds not only loved, but also enjoyed one another.  

“Ashley is the most curious person I’ve ever met,” Joe says. “In classes together, at Forty Acres events together, she was always the first one to raise her hand, and she always had a question that really made the speaker think. She’s fearless and brilliant.” Separately, Ashley said almost the same thing about Joe: “He’s the kindest, most thoughtful person I have ever met.

“I just thank my lucky stars every day that I get to be married to him,” she says. “He’s also hilarious, and the smartest person I know, and so spontaneous and fun. But that’s all icing on the cake.”

CREDIT: Courtesy of Ashley and Joe Levin (6)