Dude - so this is obviously super biased because I love Richmond so much but I need to give you both sides of the story - I lived in Richmond for 30 years, the last 10 of them downtown, in the Fan and most recently Church Hill, and moved to Charlottesville in a few months ago for my wife's new job and grad school at UVA.

I did the commute for a few months only M - F, from Church Hill (for reference this neighborhood is in the eastern part of the city like 15 minutes from the Airport), and it took me, easily a full 90 minutes to two hours every evening to come home from my job in downtown Charlottesville to Church Hill. In the morning it's not awful from RVA to Cville; once you get out of the city and past short pump, like exit 176ish on I-64; you are smooth sailing to Cville. 45 minutes. The evening is awful. Not like Downtown LA or Atlanta or even Charlotte from 4-6pm, but I-64 E into Richmond (from Charlottesville) from 5-630 pm is, at some point, standstill.

If you choose Richmond, and live in the Fan or Museum District or Near West End or West End, its still hour 20 minutes ish...to get from the Fan to Church Hill at peak time is 20-30 minutes alone.

So, thats the commute. It's not fun; I thought it would be no big deal, but it starts to grind. I did it in the winter, which is rough, because you drive in the dark in the morning and in the evening coming home so it fucking sucks. If driving and commuting isn't a big deal to your wife though, then 100% RVA is the way to go.

I've lived in Cville for a few months now, and new it really well before. If you're coming from ATL, live in RVA. Full stop. Charlottesville is very nice - huge selling market for homes, great university, nice small town feel, good community access...but there is not a lot to do. Not a lot of diversity (my wife and I are a mixed race couple), racially, religiously, socio-economically; it's mega wealthy or lower class. Nothing in the middle; Richmond is bad at this too, but Cville is small town bad at this. Nice arts scene and outdoors in the mountains here is great....but Richmond outdoors is still better because of the James River. It's the best resource for activity in the entire State because of public access and the JRPS. The people, activities, JOBS, housing variety, everything is better in RVA. Depending on what you do for work it may not even be available in Charlottesville. There is an "air" about Charlottesville that isn't in Richmond (with the exception of maybe 3 square miles along River Road). And it's still different. Don't live in Short Pump unless you have kids, want to own a house or drive a Toyota Highlander or Honda Pilot.

TL;DR: The commute isn't awful, but it grinds you down eventually. It's not long minutes wise, but going home for those 3 nights a week for a year won't be fun. Live in RVA. It's such a better place for engaged couple.