Hitched

Hedy and Jeff Foley
JUNE 21, 2003

"I'm going to find you the best man in the world."

When Kelly Safranski uttered these words to 26-year-old Hedy Safranski (at the time on the mend from yet another failed romance), Hedy's reaction was skeptical.

"Yeah, right," she said.

Despite Hedy's doubts, Kelly, her sister-in-law, had a point. She'd never liked any of Hedy's boyfriends. Well, sort of. "The other boyfriends I liked, but they just weren't marriage material, " Kelly says. Kelly had witnessed this dating history at Gonzaga University, where the two went to college.

In early 2000, the women were out of college and back in Portland. Kelly didn't want her friend to be "the single girl," all alone amidst a sea of betrothed couples. But she also didn't want to fix Hedy up with some schmoe who'd last only a week.

Kelly's sights were set much higher.

"I wasn't finding her a boyfriend," she emphatically recalls. "I was finding her a husband."

Turns out Kelly didn't have to work too hard.

That September, Jeff Foley began work as a business consultant on a project and landed a desk in the cubicle next to Kelly's at Intel. Almost immediately, Kelly started scheming.

'Must be a smart guy if he works here,' she reckoned. 'Wonder if he's single?'

In his first week on the job, Jeff and Kelly made small talk in the halls. What Jeff didn't know was that Kelly was taking mental notes. A lot of them.

College athlete. Church-goer. Lean build. Tall. Blondish hair.

Bingo.

There was just one more question: single or taken?

Kelly waited just two and a half weeks to ask the question.

Jeff answered "single," and Kelly sprang into action describing Hedy: She played volleyball in college, comes from a large Catholic family and is now a Phys Ed/Health teacher in Portland. She grabbed a framed photo of Hedy off of her desk and showed it off. "So how about a date?" she asked.

'Why not?' Jeff reasoned. "I had no real expectations," he says.

The first date (at late-night Cajun haunt Montage) was a success despite a long wait for a table--the two were so engrossed with the getting-to-know-you questions, they didn't even realize that two hours had passed. Once inside, there were no awkward silences over a bottle of wine.

They shared no first kiss that night (Hedy admits she wanted to pucker up but was too nervous to go for it), but both reported the good news to Kelly the next day. Another date was in the works.

That December, Hedy knew things were heating up when Jeff took her to meet the parents.

While it was rare for Jeff to introduce his girlfriends to Mom and Dad, he says he wasn't really thinking about marriage at that point. It took a lover's tiff to wake him up. "Hedy was upset and I thought, 'If she goes, I'm going to be devastated.' I couldn't imagine it." Jeff recalls. "That's when I realized [the relationship] was much more serious than I'd admitted."

By August of last year, sister-in-law Kelly's work was finally finished.

When Hedy took Jeff to dinner for his 27th birthday, she didn't know he had his own plans for dessert. Instead of making a birthday wish, Jeff made a birthday request: He asked Hedy to marry him.

The couple's June wedding (at downtown's First Presbyterian Church and the Portland Art Museum) was filled with more than 200 guests--including some who'd never thought Jeff was the marrying kind...and one Cupid who knew she'd find true love for Hedy.

WWeek 2015