When Bearcat Met Bearcat: Alumni Love Stories

“It was pretty much happenstance that we wound up in that class together,” says Ken Keener.  

“Or fate,” adds his wife Paulette, laughing.  

The pair first connected through a Shakespeare class in 1968. Paulette, a French major, only took the class because the course she was originally trying to register for filled up before she could nab a spot. Ken, who studied Education with a focus in English and biology, needed the course to finish up his degree that spring. Back in those days, class registration involved standing in lines in one big room to physically sign up with a pen and paper. “You probably don’t do it that way anymore,” says Ken, laughing.  

“There was a Shakespeare class right next to the table I was in line for, and they had an opening, so I just signed up,” says Paulette. “Ken and I, we weren’t really acquaintances before UC, but I knew of him.” Ken had dated Paulette’s friend in high school, but the two had never exchanged more than a few words before that fateful day in Shakespeare class. “The first day I walked into class, Ken was sitting by the door,” recounts Paulette. “So I just walked up and said ‘Hi Ken! Do you remember me?’ and he said ‘Yeah!’ And that was the start of it.”

The two slowly grew closer as the class progressed. “After class we would talk and walk to the next class together and that kind of thing,” Paulette tells me. “And eventually he said, you know, ‘there’s a Shakespeare play at Edgecliff, would you like to go?’ And I wasn’t sure if we were just friends or if this was a date. So I actually asked, I said, ‘You mean on a date?’ And he said ‘Yeah.’ And he showed up in a three-piece suit to take me [to ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’] and that was it... I was bowled over.” 

When did Ken know that Paulette was the one? “I probably knew it from right from the start, too. But it was difficult because I was finishing up at UC. Every day, the end of that came closer, and I knew I would be going to Germany, so I didn’t know what to do,” says Ken. He had already enlisted in the Army and would be stationed in Europe immediately after graduation. For the young lovebirds, the next step was a big gamble—to continue their relationship, they would have to progress things quickly, or they would have to say goodbye. And at first, it appeared that they would part ways; they had even agreed that this was for the best. “I pretty much realized that this wasn’t going to happen,” said Paulette. “I had already decided that I’d probably never see him again.”

I’ve heard it said that the friends you make during your first few weeks of freshman year are temporary friends, borne of circumstance, holdovers until you find your real group. For Eric and Sarah Penrod, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Their friendship of circumstance became a happy, loving marriage of fifteen years.  

“Eric was one of my high school friends’ roommates,” Sarah tells me. She was a business administration students, whereas Eric studied mechanical engineering. “First week freshman year, he came to lunch at the dining hall, and we met.” Right off the bat, the two began spending time together in a friend group, often going to hang out at Sarah’s dorm after dinner. But they had never spent any time alone together, until one particular night a couple weeks into the semester. “That night, we finally had homework […] so people didn’t come, but then Eric finished up his homework and he came over.” They were sitting together, chatting, when Sarah’s AIM instant messenger began to ping. “Maybe you don’t remember AIM, you’re younger than me,” she laughs. Sarah’s friend began to message her about Eric, asking what she thought of him and inquiring whether she thought that Eric liked Sarah back. “It wasn’t a laptop so I couldn’t close the screen or anything,” says Sarah. “I was like, abort, abort, abort, get out of the room […] I was beet red.” Eric saw the message but gave Sarah a couple of hours to recover from her embarrassment before bringing it up. Later that evening, he asked her out, and she said yes. Like many college freshmen, the pair’s first date was to the dining hall. The first time they left campus together, they went to Uno’s Pizza. “We were exclusive pretty much immediately, and it never got less serious as we went through time,” says Sarah, smiling at the memory. Eric agrees—it was love at first sight, meant to be.  

The couple were engaged while attending UC. Unbeknownst to Sarah, after sharing dinner at a restaurant (a luxury for college kids) Eric was planning to walk her to the spot where he first told her he loved her to pop the question. But on the way over, Sarah suddenly began to feel extremely ill, and they had to run to get Pepto Bismol, foiling his romantic plans. Fortunately, later the same night, Sarah was feeling better and Eric proposed while they were walking along the river in Newport, overlooking the city. They were married the summer before their final year of college. “We had a week-long honeymoon in Cozumel, and then back [to class].”  

Christin Bohrofren knew the moment she laid eyes on Pete Bohrofren that she was going to marry him someday. “Of course, I’d said that a couple times before,” she says, laughing. “But this time I think I was really sure about it.” Her husband rolls his eyes good naturedly. “We don’t know what happened to the other four or five guys she said that about, but it’s okay.” 

The pair met at Christie’s, a now-defunct beer garden on McMillan Street. Christin studied communications and Pete was working towards a degree in philosophy. Christin knew Pete’s fraternity brother who introduced them, and the couple hit it off right away. “I said something like, ‘Guys never ask girls out on dates anymore,” recounts Christin.  

“That was her chess move to force me into a corner to say, ‘well, why don’t we go on a date?’” says Pete. “So we did. We went to lunch at Subway.”  

“I can still remember what he was wearing,” says Christin. “He had these really wacky blue sunglasses on, and he had highlighted hair and a blue vest that matched his blue sunglasses […] totally 90s era Gen X-ers, through and through.”  

During the date at Subway, Christin opened up about a lot of things. “I spilled my guts,” she says, laughing. And neither one called the other afterwards. It seemed like the budding relationship might have stopped in its tracks, until one night at Kroger. Christin’s friend was grabbing some groceries while Christin waited in the car. The friend came running outside to tell Christin that Pete was in the store. Christin, playing it cool, went inside and pretended to be casually shopping in order to engineer a “chance encounter” with Pete. She invited him to meet her and her friends at Uncle Woody’s that night, and he showed up. “The rest is kind of history because we started dating after that,” she says.  

The two were engaged after Christin graduated, and the proposal was, quite literally, straight out of a fairy tale. With his mom’s help, Pete arranged a very special trip to Disney World. Somehow, under the guise of a behind-the-scenes tour, he led Christin into the park after hours, just the two of them. “The lights were on, the music was playing, and I got down on one knee at the base of the Princess Castle,” he recalls. Christin pulls out the ring box to show me—it is a small, ornate porcelain case with a glass slipper atop it which reads, “Dreams Can Come True.” She smiles, lost in memory. “It was really sweet,” she says. “Really thoughtful.”