It all started in Cayuga Hall of College-in-the-Woods, where the friendship of two Binghamton University students blossomed into so much more.
Now, 27 years later, Jeannie and Neil Steiner, ‘86 alumni, are looking forward to celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary with their six-year-old daughter Lauren and three-year-old son Jonathan.
The two first met during a campus scavenger hunt at orientation, which took place the week before classes started in 1982, but their first date did not come until the following year.
During the fall semester of their sophomore year, Jeannie’s sister invited her to go apple picking on Long Island, where Jeannie was from.
“I needed someone to drive me so I asked Neil if he could drive. That was our first date,” Jeannie said.
“It was a date of convenience,” Neil jokingly chimed in. “We went back with one apple.”
Once they were officially dating, Neil and Jeannie went out to dinner at restaurants off of Vestal Parkway, including Coco’s, Gratto Risotto and Number 5, but they shared meals long before they became a couple.
“Every day before dating him, freshman year, Neil would come by and wait for us [Jeannie and her roommate] so he could go to brunch with us,” she recalled. “I would always be like, ‘why are you waiting for us?’”
Neil added that they always called him to drive them to breakfast, then took hours to get ready while he waited.
“I would go by their room, which they would leave unlocked, and they were still in bed,” he said. “I’d have to wait each time. I don’t know why I didn’t get the clue they didn’t want breakfast; it happened every week.”
Jeannie and Neil shared the same group of friends throughout college, who were not too surprised when the two started dating.
“The weirdest thing is that some of our friends were like, ‘We didn’t even know you were dating,’” she said. “We were like, ‘Where were you?’”
The two spent a lot of time together on campus, watching movies in the University Union (there was only one back then) and spending Thursday nights at the campus pub, once located where the Post Office now stands.
When the two lived in CIW together, Neil carved their initials within a heart in wet cement outside their building. When their niece started her freshman year at BU, they sent her on an unsuccessful mission to find that heart.
During one of the school breaks, they even traveled to Disney World together without their parents knowing.
“They knew that we were dating, but they didn’t know that we were vacationing together,” Jeannie said. “We go to school together, live in the same dorms together, but we couldn’t go away together. We figured what they don’t know won’t hurt them, but of course they found out.”
They traveled to Disney World once more since being married, but this time with their two children.
The couple exchanged vows in 1990 and had their first child 13 years later.
This past summer, the family went up to Binghamton for the annual Spiedie Fest & Balloon Rally, taking a trip back to campus to reminisce. They reserved some time to look for the heart Neil carved.
“Where it is [the heart in cement] they had done construction for Mohawk [Hall],” Neil said. “But what they did was put dirt over the cement and then planted flowers.”
More than 20 years later, after taking the time to dig through the dirt, he found the heart.