To unpack the joke slightly:
The nobility of the Nine Houses evidently have some degree of romantic freedom - we hear about Babs' disastrous dating life and Abigail and Magnus' teenage breakup. But there are also several suggestions that it isn't unusual for members of the nobility to have their marriages at least semi-arranged while they're still in their teens
"It is already suggested that her nephew will be affianced to [Isaac] once they are of age." - Cohort Intelligence Files, GTN
"Harrowhark had her parents quash the idea [of her marrying Ortus] so enthusiastically that she cracked her father's molar." - HTN ch 3
(Perpetually unlucky in love 23 year old Babs' comment that he "should've stayed home and gotten married" might fit here too).
We also know that the Houses, or at least the most affluent and wealthy ones, seem to have something of a social season, with balls and parties and eligible young people making their social debut:
"Archivist Zeta said, “Shut up, you lot; this is not a Third House debutant party.” - The Mysterious Study of Dr Sex
Which is interesting, because we know that Abigail broke up with Magnus at a ball when they were 17 - debutantes were often in their late teens or early 20s, which makes me wonder whether the break up was at least in part spurred by the looming expectation that Abigail might find a suitable spouse.
Magnus was clearly moving in the same social circles, if they were at a ball together (we don't know whether they met at school or simply socially), but he doesn't appear to come from a family with a noble title - he's just "Sir Magnus" and presumably gentry (of whatever the Houses' equivalent is of a well-born, landowning, possibly armigerous class - think the sort of people who are the protagonists of Austen novels). But Abigail is the heir of the House, and would presumably be expected to marry another member of the nobility.
Abigail may have intended to be rather more of a "bluestocking deb" (to steal the derogatory phrasing used by the 1950s press to describe well-bred girls who had the temerity to want to go to university at some point in between their debutante ball and their eventual marriage), but you do get the sense that social structure and pressure is there. Meanwhile, her younger brother marries and has children, one of whom is apparently of an age with Isaac, which would suggest that he likely married in his very early 20s.
So for Abigail to not only go to university, but to spend a decade in higher education, and to pursue an academic career, may well have been rather out there for someone of her status. Meanwhile, Magnus becomes seneschal "shortly before marrying Abigail Pent" - which means that either Abigail married her mum's estate manager, or Magnus was appointed to the role because he was marrying Abigail. But when you consider how appalling even marriages between gentry of differing incomes seem to society in Austen novels, for example, you suspect that Abigail marrying her mother's seneschal in her late 20s might have been something of a scandal - though perhaps one rather eclipsed by the furore around him becoming her cavalier five years later.
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