By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
January 16, 2000
This Thanksgiving, Ryan Ebens and Oana Agape celebrated the anniversary of their first date by vacationing in Aspen, Colo. He woke her up one morning and insisted that they get an early start skiing.
“I didn’t want to wake up so early, but I didn’t want to disappoint him,” says Oana, 22. “So I got up and we went out to ski.”
Oana, who hadn’t skied in a decade, was too busy getting off the ski lift to notice a 3-foot-by-8-foot banner erected at the top of the mountain asking, “Oana, will you marry me?” When her eyes focused in on it, she broke out in happy tears.
“Everyone knew that he was going to propose except for me,” Oana says, laughing. “And everyone kept it a secret, which is the amazing part.”
The couple met in August 1996, when they used to eye each other at the swimming pool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a lifeguard. He was on a coed swim team. Both were dating other people at the time, so their flirtation never went past “Hi.”
“I remember seeing him that first time,” says Oana. “A lot of good-looking guys came to the pool, but he really stood out. He’s my type–tall, dark hair, green eyes. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. For two years, he’d come to the pool. But we didn’t really start talking to each other until I joined the swim team.”
The attraction wasn’t one-sided, says Ryan, 24.
“I thought she was really cute,” he says. “But we were both so shy. Finally we went somewhere with a group of other people and had a really good time. I ended up e-mailing her to see if she wanted to go out and dance some time. I’m not a great dancer, but she’s really into it, so I thought I could use that as my pickup line. I said, `Maybe you could teach me.’ ”
Oana bit. The pair talked on the phone for more than an hour that night. They went on their first real date the following week, and have been dating each other exclusively for more than a year.
The couple is waiting to set a wedding date until after Oana graduates from U. of I. this year. Then she will join Ryan in Rockford, where he’s based.
“We’re thinking about maybe going to [her native] Romania for our honeymoon,” Ryan says. “It’d be great to meet the rest of her relatives. And then we could go to France and Italy and see more of Europe.”
