Aztec Love Connection
Alumni Event Leads to Wedding Plans
Heather Robertson at September 15, 2005 20/30s Alumni Single Mingle. |
Heather Robertson ('02) wished she were somewhere else. Anywhere else. As a member of the 20/30s Young Alumni board, she had helped organize the “meet and greet” event her group was sponsoring at a La Jolla watering hole, but she was tired and just not in the mood.
Figuring she would help hand out nametags then slip away early, the 27-year-old executive assistant soon discovered she was in for a longer evening than she had planned. “It was one of our events that probably didn't have as great a turnout as we expected,” Robertson recalls. “That's how I got roped into doing the actual speed dating.”
That was September 15, 2005. A date, as fate would have it, Robertson would remember for the rest of her life.
"It just was one of those names that stuck out in my head."
Steve Thurner at September 15, 2005 20/30s Alumni Single Mingle. |
Steve Thurner ('95) will never forget that night either. The 35-year-old software developer had tried some dating services without much luck. When he saw the notice for the 20/30s gathering, he decided to check it out. “I went to the event thinking ‘this would be a good place for me to go,'” he remembers, “‘because I have a chance to meet people my own age that I'm automatically going to have something in common with because we all went to San Diego State.'”
When Thurner arrived and she first saw his name, Robertson thought it sounded familiar. “She said, 'Steve Thurner, why do I know that name?' he recalls. “And I'm, like, 'well, I don't know because I don't recognize you.'”
The two compared SDSU attendance years and exchanged questions about various activities; everything they could think of to ask. “We still never came up with anything,” says Robertson. “Turns out, I didn't know him. It just was one of those names that stuck out in my head.”
The strange sense of familiarity lingered to the last round of dates for the evening as Robertson prepared to head for the door and Thurner cranked up the charisma for one final interview. “So I sit down at the place that was supposed to be my last station and the girl across from me says, 'I have to go' and she gets up and walks away,” he remembers. “So I'm like, 'well, no one's sitting down at Heather's spot, so what the heck?' So I get up and walk over there.”
"That was either the most colossal, giant failure of all time or she really, really likes me."
They talked again and as Thurner tells it, “just seemed to hit it off.” As the evening ended, he handed her his business card and mustered the courage to ask her out. But friends had previously assessed his courting technique as “wimpy.” The thought of that judgment created a millisecond of self-doubt at the precise moment Thurner needed to make his smooth close.
“So I start out with my question and I'm, like, 'if you think….' and then I paused because immediately I'm reeling back in and I'm, like, 'wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! No! That's the wrong way to ask this. We need to ask this strong,'” Thurner says, recounting his fumbling advance with narration from the monologue that went on in his mind.
“So I paused.”
And as Thurner describes it, that was just the opening Robertson needed. “Heather never even missed a beat. From the 'if you think…' and the pause, she (immediately retorted) 'Oh, like I don't have a brain!' And for the next five minutes I'm reeling and back-pedaling and whatnot. I finally left the event at that point thinking, 'well, that was either the most colossal, giant failure of all time or she really, really likes me.'”
Thurner was smitten. Robertson remembers thinking he was nice, but that nothing would likely come of their conversation. “I wasn't sure really if I would call or not,” she says. “I was just glad it was over and time to go home.”
 A few weeks passed before she called, but a date was arranged and in a few months the two were going out on a regular basis. “I love her personality,” Thurner explains. “She is such a vibrant and alive human being. She's very willing to try new and different things.”
“He's very sincere,” Robertson says of Thurner. “He's just an all-around great guy, very good, very sensitive to my needs.”
What do they have in common? “Of course our love for San Diego State,” Robertson quickly points out, adding that both are lifetime members of the SDSU Alumni Association. “We both go to all the Aztec football games and things like that.”
“Our sixth official date was actually homecoming game last year, which she goes to every year with her dad,” says Thurner. “We had a little tailgate and I got to meet her parents.”
As much as they both enjoy SDSU football, the best date of all for these love-struck Aztecs was an August 13 visit to Sea World. Sitting in Shamu Stadium just as the House of Douse show was getting under way, they heard their names over the public address system. “They announced it saying he had a very important question to ask,” remembers Robertson.
Steve Thurner proposes to Heather Robertson August 13. |
“I heard my name so I started to kneel down and really from that moment on it was just Heather and me,” says Thurner. “I mean, the whole crowd just kind of disappeared. I whipped out the ring and I said something along the lines of, 'you've made me very happy. I love you very much and I want you to be my wife.' It didn't come out necessarily in that order or intelligible, but that's basically what I was trying to say.”
“I was speechless and I never truly said yes,” Robertson recalls. “I just shook my head and kept kissing him. It was before thousands of people. It was crazy. We were up on the JumboTron. There was a big spotlight on us the whole time.”
Looking on with the thousands were the couple's parents and several of their friends. “I did not hear the 'yes,' but she did nod her head,” says Thurner. “Then we had our really big kiss and the crowd cheered and roared and that's the moment when the world came back in.”
“It was nuts, but it's a great memory,” laughs Robertson. “I'll never forget it.”
"That's the way I see the future of my life."
Since that night Robertson has worn the engagement ring Thurner gave her. Adorned with a circle of smaller diamonds surrounding a large one in the center, it had been his grandmother's dinner ring. “It was passed down to his father and then his father passed it down to him and ultimately it came to me,” gushes Robertson. “It's beautiful.”
Although they haven't picked a wedding date yet, “it's going to be in San Diego. That's about all that I know,” says Robertson. “Probably on the beach or outside because San Diego is beautiful.”
Heather Robertson and Steve Thurner at Sea World August 13. |
“It is certainly my intent to remain in the San Diego area because it is my home and it's where I want to stay,” Thurner agrees, saying he can also envision a second generation of Aztecs in the family. “When I go to the games and I see people tailgating and they have their kids all dressed up in San Diego State gear, that's the way I see the future of my life.”
It's a future neither would have predicted at that Alumni Association event just one year ago. They cite their experience as an example of the possibilities of staying involved with SDSU. Could their story happen again for other Aztecs? “Absolutely,” states Thurner. “My advice would be to come out and give it a try.”
“Don't be scared,” his new fiancée concurs, “because look at what happened to us.”
For more information on 20/30s Young Alumni, visit www.sdsualumni.org/2030s. |
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