By Jenni Whalen
Staff Writer
“Rumor has it that if you take your sweetheart to the benches above Freas and kiss while the sun is setting, you are bound to get married in the future,” Kalila Beehler ’12 said.Whether the rumor is true or not, University students definitely have a reputation of marrying other University students. And if you’ve been purusing the University’s Facebook page recently, you’ve seen examples of this high rate of marriage in the newly popular photo album “Bucknell in Love,” an album featuring married couples who have graduated from the University in the past 50 years.
Couples are invited to submit photos along with a description of how they met. Eighty-six stories have been submitted so far. Nate ’09 and Steph Danilack Contrella ’09 met during their first year on campus. “We were alphabetically assigned lab partners in organic chemistry lab. We began dating in January and have been together since!” they said.
Brad ’89 and Nancy Neu Paulis ’88 met in the summer of 1985. “We met at Bucknell during marching band camp. Brad (a math major) played the tuba and I (a music major) played the piccolo,” they said.
Countless other couples met in typical circumstances, including the basement of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, as a soccer player and student trainer, on a first-year hall, at House Party, as staff members for “The Bucknellian,” on study abroad programs, at a date party and in Calculus III.
This past summer, two seniors, Drew Stonesifer and Theresa Narus joined the ranks of “Bucknell in Love” when Stonesifer proposed to Narus at a nearby lake.
“We lived right around the corner from each other on Lari 2 freshman year but didn’t actually notice each other until we went to the same InterVarsity small group in late October that year,” Narus said.
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The couple dated for more than two-and-a-half years before Stonesifer proposed. On the day of the proposal, Narus was working at a summer camp and had no idea Stonesifer was planning to ask her to spend the rest of her life with him.
“A mutual friend played chauffeur and escorted me down the road to a nearby lake where Drew was all sorts of dolled up and waiting with a bouquet of flowers for me,” Narus said. “After we walked to Drew’s planned destination, I saw he had brought his keyboard, that sap. He had written me a song to make sure I would say yes. Then he got down on one knee and proposed! I responded with an enthusiastic yes!”
Narus and Stonesifer will be married on July 21, 2012 in Idaho. They plan to move to a new part of the country together after the wedding to start their life together.
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