For all you guys looking to find the key to a girl's heart, a basketball player just might provide the answers.
It's 11:30 on a Saturday night, and you're hanging out with your girlfriend and your buddies at your Penn apartment. The guys are playing video games, when your girlfriend says she's hungry. She wants a salad, but not just any salad -- she wants one from Dave & Buster's, a 15-minute drive away.
What would you do?
The average guy would likely tell his girlfriend that a salad from Freshgrocer is just as good.
Penn senior Eric Heil, a forward on the men's basketball team, is not your average guy. He went to Dave & Buster's to get his then-girlfriend Kelly Seaman the salad she wanted.
Heil's teammate Eric Osmundson would use this story to jokingly describe his best friend as "whipped."
But for his girlfriend Kelly, Eric's late-night trip is just one of many reasons that she chose to spend the rest of her life with him.
"There are two big things about Eric," Kelly said. "He is the most patient person I've ever met, and he has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known.
"He would give the clothes off his back to a stranger."
Eric had equally admiring things to say about Kelly.
"I love her selflessness, her willingness to put others first, and just caring for others," he said. "She's just a wonderful woman. She'll succeed in whatever she does."
Eric and Kelly got engaged on Aug. 26, 2004. The wedding is in 202 days, according to their wedding homepage on theknot.com. The outdoor wedding, with about 200 people attending, will take place in the Poconos on Labor Day weekend.
Their relationship began at a block party on Spruce street in March two years ago. Eric noticed Kelly as he made his way through the party. As he walked by, he bumped into her -- "I gave her a little extra bump" -- and then kept walking. Of course, Eric thought it was a smooth move on his part.
"I kept walking, turning around, making eye-contact, walking, eye contact..."
Eric described it as "almost love at first sight. Time was slowing down."
Kelly described their first encounter slightly differently.
"The funny thing was that he was smiling at me, but he was still walking away," she said. "I knew then that he was kind of a shy guy."
But lucky for Eric, Kelly's roommate -- whom he knew from an engineering course --yelled at him to come back, and proceeded to introduce them. Eric and Kelly hung out the rest of the night, he got her phone number, and from there it was your stereotypical love story.
Actually, not quite.
Their first date took place at Abner's. With Eric's sister and best friend visiting from Iowa, he invited Kelly to join them for dinner.
Their next three dates were at Van Pelt, "because we're both dorks," Kelly said.
Of course, they did not do much studying. "We just talked a while, found out what we were each all about," Eric said.
A week later, Eric invited Kelly to come with him to New York. Eric describes it as their first "real" date. They spent the day sightseeing, and took a romantic walk through Central Park. They have been inseparable ever since.
Eric and Kelly grew up hundreds of miles apart. Eric was raised in Bettendorf, Iowa, while Kelly grew up in Binghamton, N.Y.
"We complement each other really well," Eric said. "We're different, she grew up on the East coast and I grew up in the Midwest, but they were both similar size towns."
Eric and Kelly also share a strong connection to God and Christianity.
"Our faith is the foundation of our relationship," Eric said. "God has a plan for both of us, and it's to be together, share the love that He has for us, with one another, and experience what that is all about.
"It's been a phenomenal experience to be able to love someone the way that He loves us too."
Guys, I hope you're taking notes.
Kelly graduated last year from Penn with a degree in International Relations. This past year she has been working as an assistant to a Creative Executive at Warner Bros. in New York.
Still, she has managed to attend a number of Eric's games this season.
However Eric, who transferred from Lehigh to Penn two years ago, has struggled with his basketball career a bit over the past year.
Plagued by hip injuries, Eric has had difficulty practicing, and his playing time has diminished significantly from last season to this season.
"My basketball career has been tough, due to injuries," he said. "So to have something like this be part of my life has really been uplifting and encouraging."
For Kelly, Eric's injury provides just another example of his resiliency and determination.
"Even with the hip injury, he still wanted to be there, at every practice, every game," she said.
The night Eric proposed did not exactly turn out the way he had envisioned it.
Eric asked Kelly out to a fancy dinner in Center City, but Kelly preferred the laid back atmosphere of Dave & Buster's.
"I did not catch on at all, I had no idea," Kelly said. "I was wearing jeans and a Philly jersey, I just wanted to bum around in my jeans."
After dinner, Eric and Kelly played video games for about an hour, at which point Eric insisted they leave, despite Kelly's desire to keep playing.
On the drive home, Eric kept missing exits and left-turns, and he ended up driving in circles around Center City.
Still, Kelly was oblivious. She had no idea what was on Eric's mind. She did not know that the ring had been sitting in his pocket the entire night.
"She wanted to go back to my apartment, but all my roommates knew what was going on that night, so I said, 'Let's go for a walk'," Eric recalled. "So we walked around campus a little bit, and I took her to the spot that I bumped into her, right on Spruce Street, dropped to one knee, and proposed there."
Needless to say, she said yes.
For Eric, the proposal was a long time coming. He had decided at the beginning of last summer that he "was in the market for ring-shopping." He spent the next several months saving up for the ring.
"That wasn't a real big deal for her, we had talked a little bit about it, but I wanted to provide her with something that she could keep for the rest of her life," he said. "And I was able to do that, so at the end of the summer, I proposed."
Still taking notes?
When Eric's roommate and teammate Steve Danley was moving into their new apartment this year, he found out about Eric and Kelly's engagement. But it took him a little while to realize what was happening.
The day he moved in, Eric was out running errands and Kelly was sitting upstairs.
"She walks up to me, and she's holding up her left hand. And I had no idea what's going on. She's looking at me. For a second, I was like, 'This is weird, does she want me to kiss her hand and say hello?'"
Kelly said, "Look, look!" Steve, still confused, responded, "Oh, nice hand..."
"No no no, look, a ring!" Kelly said.
Steve replied, "Oh, that's great... normally people wear it on the right hand until they get enga-- oh, congratulations!"
Both of Eric's roommates could not be happier for Kelly and him.
"Heil and I both transferred in together, and he's been my best bud here," Osmundson said. "I mean I guess you could say that by him meeting her, he kind of stopped hanging out with me, but no ... I'm happy for him. I think it's a great thing for him."
"It's something he's always looked forward to in his life. He's always been there for me," he added.
Danley summed up his feelings quite simply: "It's great to see great people be together."
Eric's coach, Fran Dunphy, had only praiseworthy things to say about the senior forward.
"He's a great human being, someone I've learned a lot from over the last three years. I trust him implicitly in everything he does," he said. "He's a special guy, and I've been blessed to learn from him over the last few years."
The next year may not be easy for Eric and Kelly. After their wedding and honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, they will likely be working more than a hundred miles apart. Eric hopes to work in Philadelphia, while Kelly hopes to continue working in New York.
Kelly suggested living in a place like New Brunswick, N.J., which is situated in the middle of Philadelphia and New York.
Should that happen, "it will be a killer commute for both of us," Kelly said.
But both Kelly and Eric clearly understand what is necessary for a marriage to succeed.
"It can't be all about him, or all about me," Kelly said. "We need compromise."
No matter where Eric and Kelly live, they will have each other, and that seems to be all they need.
