MEDIA, Pa. -- When Bobbi Caprice walked into the Penn State Brandywine gym in 2009, she never dreamed that she and her future husband would meet there.
Caprice was putting her bag in the gym for an upcoming volleyball game when she met Vinny Gallo, a student worker setting up sports equipment. Gallo noticed Caprice’s Marple Newtown High School gym bag and identified himself as an alumnus of Marple’s rival school, Springfield High School.
“When I told him I was from Marple, he said, ‘Sorry to hear!’” Caprice said. “He told me he went to Springfield and I said, ‘That is the worst.’ And he walked away.”
Gallo’s first memory of Caprice stretches back a little farther than that volleyball game. He first saw Caprice while sitting with the baseball team in the gym, waiting to hand in his uniform from the fall season.
“Women’s basketball was there too, getting uniforms for their upcoming season,” he said. “I asked my teammate, ‘That girl in the Marple shirt — do you know her?’ I just remember her having this glow about her. I still can’t explain what it is, but she makes me smile.”
Gallo, a junior playing on the baseball team, and Caprice, a freshman on the volleyball, basketball and cross country teams, found that they had many mutual friends on and off campus. More importantly, they quickly learned that there was something special about their own friendship.
“We met in October, our first date was Nov. 21, and he asked me to be his girlfriend on Dec. 10 that year,” said Caprice.