I don't have first hand experience in this but a close friend of mine and his significant other matched in Ophthalmology/Anesthesia during the match last year.
From talking to them about it thorougout the whole process last year I can tell you that their strategy was to apply broadly. Since ophthalmology programs are more selective about interview offers compared to let's say neurology or even anesthesia they both applied to a significantly large number of schools (around 80-90). Their thought process was that once he gets ophtho interview offers they can tailor her interviews to the same geographic area or cities.
Another part of their strategy was also to do away rotations in big cities increasing their chances of ending up in the same city even if they don't end up in the same program.
If you think about it, large cities have more than 1 ophthalmology program: Chicago has 6, Detroit and the surrounding area has 5, Philly has 4, NYC has idk how many, LA, Houston/Galveston, etc etc.
Once the offers started rolling in they picked and choose interviews for her in the same region that he had interviews. And same for him but he had less flexibility given that ophtho is getting more selective.
Obviously it wasn't a perfect science but I think in the end they both had about 10-12 interviews in the same cities/schools.
The good part about it though is that he got to rank schools however he wanted because his match was first. Than once he matched she just called the PD at the same city that he matched at and told them and she is ranking them first because her SO matched ophthalmology in the same city.
It was a stressful process for them, they were anxious about offers and what to do when one got one offer and another hadn't yet, etc. Obviously their plan was a strategy and it wasn't foolproof. But in the end they both ended up matching at the same school.
I know of another couple at my school that also did Ophtho/Another specialty and again they targeted bigger cities and both ended up in Philly, even though it wasn't the same school. He matched at a Philly program first and than she had more than one philly school on her list and ranked than all high to end up there.
From seeing my friend last year it's definitely doable but you also have to be less picky about where you end up and have to be more flexible in terms of caliber and the extra bells and whistles if one of your priorities is also to match at the same place.
Please take this with a grain of salt. Obviously I didn't go through the process first hand, but it was a close personal friend so I did hear about the challenges and struggles throughout the year. Maybe I missed something because not going through the process at the same time did not put things into context for me.
I'm sure you will have more responses on this thread from people who have gone through the process themselves and can give you alternate or different ideas on how to go about it.
PS: both of their fields required a prelim year. Even though they applied to the same prelim years and often interviewed at the same ones together because of the stress of the main match they didn't bother trying to coordinate that as much. They were willing to spend a year apart if needed, which did end up happening.
I hope this was helpful.
