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Couple will get married on second anniversary of first date after meeting at Akron race in 2006
By Jewell Cardwell
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Wednesday, Sep 10, 2008
You never know when and where you'll find true love.
Listen in on the local version of When Harry Met Sally. Well, without the tension and the restaurant scene.
Nate Eppink and Kelly Harvan had signed up to run in the 2006 Road Runner Akron Marathon.
Strangers before that day, Nate and Kelly were singularly concerned with giving their all in separate five-person relay races.
But a funny thing happened on the cold and wet day at the crowded starting line near the Inventors Hall of Fame.
As fate would have it, the two — the young man with reddish blond hair from Willoughby Hills, and the young woman with light brown hair from Cleveland Heights — found themselves invested in a conversation with a petite woman nearby.
''I'm kinda nervous. I've never done this before,'' Nate recalled the woman's faint words.
A concerned Nate and Kelly, both within hearing distance, turned around at the same time to offer words of encouragement to the neophyte runner. Soon they found themselves lost in conversation with one another.
Almost in the blink of an eye, the woman disappeared, never to be seen again.
''When he turned around, he was wearing a white cap from the previous year's race,'' Kelly said. ''So, I knew he had done this before . . . ''
''Her hair was in pigtails and she was really cute,'' Nate happily reminisced.
''We talked for several miles,'' Kelly said, learning a lot about each other.
''She was an English teacher at St. Peter Chanel High School in Bedford,'' Nate said. ''She talked about plans to go to nursing school someday. The conversation was so effortless. Like we had met before.
''I was never one for talking while running. I liked being focused, getting in my zone and keeping my mouth shut. One of the reasons is I have asthma.''
Nate said Kelly impressed him by something else. ''The first time I really took note of her was when we got to the first water station. She grabbed a cup of water and gave it to me. I thought to myself, 'What a cool person.' ''
They continued running and talking until around mile three when Kelly, operating on little sleep, got a cramp.
Nate found himself faced with the dilemma — Do I stop and wait for her? Or would that seem too creepy?
He decided to keep running, kicking himself all the way.
Happy reunion
In the sea of other runners, Nate felt he had no chance of ever seeing the woman he knew only as Kelly.
But the love gods intervened at Wilbeth Road.
''I was standing there talking when she rounded the corner,'' Nate recalled.
He still didn't have the courage to ask for her phone number before they went separate ways.
But he knew her first name, where she worked and the name of her team, The Harvan Globetrotters.
So, he searched the Beacon Journal the next day for race results, found her team and her last name — Harvan.
He e-mailed her the next day and asked her out for coffee, even though he doesn't drink coffee.
A still-nervous Nate Eppink — who is now spokesman and chief of marketing and communications for Metro Parks, Serving Summit County — remembers rewriting and proofreading that e-mail over and over. ''I wanted to make sure everything was grammatically correct and it had a little humor,'' he said.
Kelly loved it.
Their dinner at Marcelita's in Hudson turned into a long after-dinner stroll. ''My mom called me three times'' on the cell phone, Kelly said. ''She was worried about me meeting up with some strange guy. She was relentless. Finally, I answered. 'Are you alive?' she asked. She would have called the police if I hadn't answered.''
Long story short: Nate, 30, and Kelly, 29, are planning to run together in this year's race — Saturday, Sept. 27.
And there's this. The couple is looking forward to getting married Oct. 10, the second anniversary of their first date.
Thanks to marathon
Nate and Kelly credit the Road Runner Akron Marathon with bringing them together.
''The marathon was the last place I ever expected to meet the love of my life,'' Nate said. ''We had both given up on finding somebody. Without the race, I wouldn't have met Kelly.''
When the movers and shakers behind the race learned about the couple and their plan to make a donation to the race in lieu of wedding favors — er, a finder's fee — they decided to turn the tables.
To celebrate this in-a-class-by-itself love story and Nate and Kelly's upcoming nuptials, the marathon is dedicating a mile marker at this year's race to the happy couple, who will have the opportunity to personalize it with decorations before the race.
Kelly, who works at WKSU as manager of communications and is in charge of publications, originally embarked on running in celebration of her late brother-in-law's journey.
''When my sister Erin's husband — John Robinson, a runner and a teacher [faculty master in French] at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson — was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2002, he told her to run a marathon for him,'' Kelly said.
''At first, Erin started running to deal with the stress. When she ran her first marathon in Burlington, Vt., my mother and I went to cheer her on. I remember seeing how determined she was. I decided then I had no excuse not to exercise and do it, too.''
John Robinson died in January 2003. He was 31.
The rest is history. Kelly has been running ever since.
By the way, Nate's sister and Kelly's mother will run with them this year, symbolic of the two families coming together.
As for the local marathon, known for beautiful landscapes, neighborhood bands and cheering squads, Nate and Kelly plan to do it every year.
''Perhaps even with our own kids,'' Kelly added.
Jewell Cardwell can be reached at 330-996-3567 or jcardwell@thebeaconjournal.com.
You never know when and where you'll find true love.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Posted 04:53 PM, 09/10/2008
I'd hit it.
Posted 09:21 AM, 09/27/2008
Tears are in my eyes... Against the odds, where one wouldn't expect to find, Soulmate Found!Congratulations to these two wonderful people. Oh, and Hank is a piggie.
