Remembering Metropolitan Dimitrios Couchell

This morning, February 19, 2026, Metropolitan Dimitrios Couchell reposed. Although comparatively few know his name, he was, in fact, one of the greatest men in the history of Greek Orthodoxy in America.

This past September, I unexpectedly spent some time with Metropolitan Dimitrios. He was an old friend of my father, but he and I had never met. I asked him a bunch of questions about his life, and as soon as I got back to my hotel, I typed up notes from that conversation. This article is largely based on those notes.

He was born James Couchell in Greenville, South Carolina, to Greek-American parents, on February 17, 1938. (Meaning, he died two days after his 88th birthday.) He attended Northwestern for a year and then switched to Holy Cross, which back then was a six-year bachelor’s program. He graduated in 1963, and that same year, he attended the big CEOYLA Orthodox youth festival in Pittsburgh, where he was one of the two altar servers at the pan-Orthodox vespers.

PHOTO: Matthew Namee with Metropolitan Dimitrios

After finishing at Holy Cross, he spent a year at Yale Divinity School. Next, he was going to take a job as a Greek school teacher at a parish, but the Archdiocese offered him a position — without giving him any details about what the job would entail. He went to New York to meet with Archbishop Iakovos, and he asked Iakovos, “What do you want me to do?” Iakovos said, “What do you want to do?” Couchell replied, “I’d like to do campus ministry.” Iakovos responded, “Well, then your job is to do campus ministry.” This was in about 1965. First, Couchell spent several months meeting with campus ministry leaders for other Christian groups, and he wrote a report on his findings. After this, he started visiting college campuses, where he would find out who the Orthodox students were, regardless of ethnicity or jurisdiction. He coordinated with local priests, again regardless of ethnicity and jurisdiction.