Couple celebrate the silver anniversary of the day they met during the race. »
The first time Suzy Whittemore and Fred Berhenke ran the Cherry Creek Sneak together, 25 years ago on a gorgeous Colorado morning, she cast such a spell on him that he ran the beginning of the race backward.
“Fred was showing off already,” Whittemore recalled Sunday after they commemorated the silver anniversary of the day they met by running the race more or less together again. “I think he was thinking he was flirting with me.” Yes, he was. “No comment,” Berhenke said with a grin.
It worked. The couple, both now 73, have been together ever since that day in 1992. She finished Sunday’s 5-mile race in one hour, 18 minutes, 31 seconds, then waited at the finish line for a couple of minutes and crossed the finish line again with him (1:21:15). He wore the shirt from the 1992 race, the 10th Sneak.
They met before the start of the 1992 race at the corner of First and Steele. She was with a friend of hers, and he recognized the friend from a Denver Athletic Club exercise class where he was a regular. He struck up a conversation, and it wasn’t long before he was smitten.
He was in the middle of a divorce. She had just broken up with a long-term boyfriend. They ran that race together, and midway through it they came upon her exboyfriend.
“I said to Fred — I hardly knew him, for an hour, or whatever — ‘Act like you like me,’ ” she said.
“To put on a show for the exboyfriend,” he said.
After the race Berhenke, Whittemore and her friend hung out together on a hill near the finish. They were having such a grand day, Whittemore invited them to her house for pasta and wine. Pretty soon her friend realized she was in the way and left them alone. When Whittemore needed to walk her dog, Fred went along. They wound up at a designer show home and decided to check it out.
“There was a little Romeo and Juliet balcony,” she said. “Guess who got a smooch.”
That night he called and left a message on her answering machine that said: “I want you to
know I had the best time today that I’ve had in a long time.” She wasn’t there to answer the phone because she was on a date. She called him back a day or two later and got his answering machine. He called back and they talked for more than two hours. They went on their first date that week, and together they have run all but two of the Cherry Creek Sneaks since.
“I love his honesty, his brightness and his fidelity,” she said, adding that their personalities are very different.
“Opposites attract,” he said.
“In this case,” she said, “opposites do attract.”
When it comes to running, he’s slowing down because as she put it, “His knees and hips are beginning to crunch up on him a little bit.” But they remain active. She skied 18 times this year. He got in “seven or eight” days.
“You just can’t sit around and do nothing,” she said, “or you’re going to end up sitting around doing nothing and gaining weight.”
That attitude is just one reason he’s still smitten after 25 years.
“She’s energetic,” he said, “she’s a great cook, she likes to do things, and she gets me off my dead duff.”