iffany Petrosky, 21, and Robert Marek, 23, met when they were very young, but it wasn't until 19 years later that they actually got to know each other.

It wasn't as if they didn't have a lot pushing them together: Their mothers had been best friends in high school. They had played together as babies. They went to school together through seventh grade. And years later they worked out at the same gym.

Fate was bound to kick in eventually. Both grew up in Garfield Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. Petrosky's mother and Marek's mother were very close during high school. When both women married and started families, the friends started to grow apart. But not before their children had played together a few times.

Photo contributed by Tiffany Petrosky

Even though Petrosky and Marek were later in the same class at William Foster Elementary School, they never became friends. When Petrosky was in seventh grade, her parents divorced, and she moved with her mother to New Mexico. She finished high school there.

In 1997, Petrosky returned to Ohio to live with her father in Garfield Heights. She enrolled at Kent State. After a year on campus, she moved back in with her father for the summer. Marek noticed her when she was working out at the gym one day.

"She concentrated really hard while she was working, and I couldn't get her attention," says Marek, a junior accounting major. "She never even noticed me, but I noticed her. Then a few days later as I was getting out of my car at home, she was getting out of hers only two doors down. She lived on my street."

"He came over and introduced himself, but neither of us realized the connection in our pasts," says Petrosky, a junior middle childhood education major. "He didn't ask me out right away, but I later found out that it was because he broke up with his girlfriend so that he could get to know me."

Marek felt the connection right from the beginning.

"I said to my friends she was 'the one' before I even went out with her," Marek says. "I knew there was something between us."

The two started dating and eventually talked about marriage. They picked out a ring together in October 1999.

"I was there when he bought the ring, but I wasn't allowed to talk about it or even think about it," Petrosky says. "I knew it was coming, but I just didn't know when."

In December 1999, the couple flew to New Mexico to visit Petrosky's family for Christmas. They had a layover in St. Louis and spent it at the airport.

"He had been acting weird all day, and I thought it was because he didn't get enough sleep or something," Petrosky says. "He was getting on my nerves, and then he started pulling on my jacket when I was talking to this older man in the airport."

Marek was kneeling on one knee beside her, but he couldn't get her attention.

"She just kept on talking, and the man that she was talking to is staring at me because I am trying to propose and she doesn't even know it," Marek says. "He knew what was going on, but I couldn't get her attention."

Finally she got the hint.

"I couldn't believe it," Petrosky says. "I was crying, and the whole airport was cheering and clapping. It was amazing. In all the excitement, I didn't even say yes. Later when we were in the air, he asked me what my answer had been."

The couple insists it has something that is going to last.

"From our first date, when he took me to play miniature golf, instead of to somewhere like a bar or a movie, I knew he was different," Petrosky says. "And then when my mom met him, she thought he was wonderful. She never liked any guy that I went out with. Once we got to know how close our families had been, it was even better."

"It was never awkward with us," Marek says. "We just clicked."