- Megan Hoedt and Madison Mellquist went viral on TikTok last month when they shared footage of them opening up their Match Day results with their young daughters.
- The best friends met during their first week of medical school, and on March 17 they found out they are both set to start residency programs at the same hospital.
- Looking ahead, the pair is glad to be staying in Florida with their husbands and their kids, Hoedt’s 7-week-old Margaret and Mellquist’s 19-month-old Willow.
Megan Hoedt and Madison Mellquist’s lives look completely different compared to when they first started medical school in 2021. Over the past four years, they’ve both gotten married and become parents. They’ve determined what types of medicine they want to practice, and in just a few weeks, they’ll start signing their names with an “M.D.” at the end.
However, one thing remains consistent between the two residents-to-be: they stick together. And on March 21, the best friends were elated to learn that won’t be changing anytime soon.
Mellquist, 26, brought smiles to 1.8 million viewers’ faces when she shared footage of her and Hoedt, 27, opening their matching Match Day results on TikTok. While cradling their kids in their arms, they shouted with excitement and wrapped each other into a tight hug to celebrate the news that they were both accepted to their top-choice residency programs at the same hospital.
In her caption, Mellquist noted that their daughters — her 19-month-old, Willow, and Hoedt’s 7-week-old, Margaret — were going to get to “stay together” as well. “Women can do anything,” Mellquist wrote alongside the video.
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As Mellquist readies herself to start a pediatric residency and Hoedt prepares to begin in the emergency medicine field this June, the two Florida natives are looking back on the journey that led them to success and a forever friendship.
“We had lab, and we were partners. We were randomly paired,” Mellquist recalls to PEOPLE exclusively. “We just yapped like the entire time and couldn’t stop. And then as we were leaving, we were walking toward the garage to our cars and we were basically like, ‘Are we friends now?'”
Hoedt adds that they spent the “entirety of our osteopathic lab” gabbing and would continue the conversation afterwards, talking on the way to their cars and before leaving class for the day.
“Neither of us had made good friends in medical school [yet] … We yapped for so long that we were like, ‘Okay, we’re definitely friends because we cannot stop talking to one another,'” says Hoedt. “And then literally within two months of that, I was looking for wedding dresses with her.”
In fact, Hoedt was a bridesmaid when Mellquist got married in June 2022, and she returned the favor when her pal got married two years later.
When it came time for the best friends to apply for their residencies, Mellquist had long been sure she was headed in the direction of pediatrics. She easily identified that the Florida-based school was perfect for her and her family; she and her husband wouldn’t need to upheave their lives to move, and the program itself would give Mellquist the practice she needed to thrive throughout her career ahead.
Courtesy of Madison Mellquist and Megan Hoedt
Hoedt’s journey to their future shared workplace was a little less straightforward, she admits. Originally, the new mom wanted to apply to OB-GYN residencies, then changed her mind at the “last second.”
“I got exposed to emergency medicine right before our applications were due and fell in love with it and changed my whole life plan,” she tells PEOPLE. The specialty’s specific rotation schedule would allow her to spend time with her husband and child, making the balance between work, life and motherhood a little less daunting.
Hoedt put together her “rank list” of her preferred programs just after she welcomed her daughter in February, and when she revisited the list after her maternity leave, she saw a new program she’d never previously come across — and it was at the same Tampa hospital as Mellquist’s top choice.
“I’m literally born and raised in Tampa and we were trying to stay, and then it turns out there’s a brand new residency program. This was literally a week before our lists were due at the end of February,” says Hoedt. “It was real serendipitous, because this program’s perfect for me and has everything that I wanted in a program, and they still interviewed me at the last second, even though they were done with interviews and everything.”
Plus, both Mellquist and Hoedt were drawn to the hospital for its daycare option, meaning their kids would be looked after together during their moms’ work hours. The serendipity of it all was abundantly clear in Mellquist’s video, and she says she’s glad that elation came across their viewers.
Courtesy of Madison Mellquist and Megan Hoedt
“It was crazy. We both were hoping so hard,” says Hoedt, who adds that she used to watch medical students’ Match Day videos online when she was younger. “I did everything I could. I was just crossing my fingers, toes and everything in between trying to hope that it happened. It did. We opened it up and we were like, ‘Holy s—, we did it.’”
Mellquist agrees, adding, “We’re so excited that our reaction — something so awesome happening in our life — has affected other people and made other people happy too.”
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