Stephanie & Steve Kifowit: Love in a canoe

Some women may feel like they’re floating on air when their man pops the question.

But Aurora Alderman Stephanie Kifowit literally was floating — on water — when her husband asked for her hand in marriage.

The pair was visiting friends in Michigan on a July 4 weekend trip in 1995 when they took a canoe trip that became memorable as much more than just a paddle down a river.

Kifowit and her soon-to-be husband, Steve, were more adept paddlers than the rest of the group.

“They were way behind us. They capsized and everything,” Kifowit said. “We knew we would meet up with them at the end of the trip.”

So Stephanie and Steve, who met when Steve was a math tutor at Northern Illinois University and Stephanie came in for calculus help, were alone in their vessel. Although they were on water, Steve didn’t have to worry about dropping the ring.

“He just proposed with a ring to come later,” she said. And the ring that came later had a one-karat emerald surrounded by half-karat diamonds.

After meeting in the math tutoring center, the couple went on their first date April 1, 1995.

“We just really clicked on our first date,” Kifowit said. “We just got along perfectly.”

Both were veterans, with Stephanie serving in the Marines from 1990 to 1994 and Steve in the Army from 1984 to 1988. Both were from the suburbs, with Stephanie graduating from Wheaton Central High School and Steve living in Aurora all his life.

Call it love at first sight, or as Stephanie said, “instantaneous love.”

They married Sept. 14, 1996. Fourteen years and two children later, the memory of the canoe trip-turned-marriage proposal remains a fond one.