It was just a few days before Tim Ream was set to make his MLS debut and the farthest thing from his mind that Tuesday night in March was marking Chicago’s star striker Brian McBride or even the start of the season. Ream had just finished dinner in Hoboken, a noisy town just on the other side of the river from Manhattan and New York City, and was walking along the water’s edge with his girlfriend, Kristen Sapienza. Hand in hand they walked, with the bustling city’s skyline to their right.
Ream remembers she complained about the cold and wanted to turn around as the temperature was in the lower 40’s and windy. Ever sympathetic, he told her to press on. They came across a viewfinder that would give them a magnified look at the skyline. Ream popped in a quarter so Sapienza could take a look at Manhattan.
She complained to him that she couldn’t see anything.
“It was then that I said ‘The important stuff isn’t out there, it is right here’,” Ream remembers.
She turns around and there was her boyfriend of nearly two years, on one knee, waiting to propose.
“After some screaming, she did say yes,” Ream said. “We hugged and kissed and then she called her parents.”
It was the only time this season that Ream has taken a knee as the rookie is the only Red Bull to play every minute of every MLS match.
It was no surprise to the Sapienzas, as several weeks before Ream had called her Mr. Sapienza to ask for permission to marry his daughter. The answer was a yes, and Ream quietly admits that the entire conversation took no more than five minutes.
For the central defender, it was love at first sight.
They met through soccer, as Sapienza played for the women’s team at St. Louis University, with Ream starring for the Billikens’ men’s team.
“The first thing I noticed about her was her smile. I’m not sappy like that, but I really noticed how amazing her smile was. I said ‘wow’,” Ream recalls. “But she has a great personality, she’s always fun to be around whether we’re doing something or just chilling. And the conversations are great – whether we’re talking deep or talking about a whole lot of nothing.”
The couple are planning a January, 2012 wedding.
Kristian R. Dyer can be reached for comment at KristianRDyer@yahoo.com and followed at twitter.com/kdyer1012.
