When Jason Randall’s friend gave him a signed photograph of Blackhawks star Marion Hossa, the gift came with instructions: get it framed at Colbert’s Custom Framing and ask for Stephanie.
“He gave this picture to me and he said, ‘alright so I’ve got somebody that I want you to meet and I think you’d really hit it off,’ and 45 minutes later we’re on our way out to coffee,” said Jason.
“And it was a thing where I thought, ‘Oh, wow I could spend some time getting to know this person,’ said Stephanie.
Coffee went well and led to dinner. But then the new couple wanted to find an activity for their next date.
“So we wanted to get somewhere else that we could go and have something to do in the process of our date and Pinot’s was just a great option for us,” said Jason. “We got a chance to do some painting and we’ve got something to focus on while we’re still talking back and forth.”
At Pinot’s Palette in Naperville they each painted Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ and that’s when they began to picture their future.
Just over a year later, Stephanie and Jason were on a trip to England, when Jason popped the question.
“I wasn’t expecting to get engaged on the trip,” said Stephanie. “We were there for other reasons but we were walking around the gardens in front of Kensington Palace and I turned around from taking a picture and he put his hands on my shoulders and sits me down and my heart went, ‘Whoa something significant is happening!’”
The couple were married on June 10, 2018 and are now expecting their first child around the beginning of May – all thanks to that first framed photo.
And though Stephanie did make Jason pay for his frame when they first met, he says it was money well spent.
“It was an expensive cup of coffee but it was fantastic,” he joked.
Naperville News 17’s Casey Krajewski reports.
