Pair tying knot over Oly love

PROVO — It's 5 a.m. in February 2002, and Salt Lake City is dark and cold everywhere but the Olympic Village coffee house, where an unlikely romance is about to blossom.

German goalie Marc Seliger, the star of the first week of the Olympics, can't sleep, so he's alone with SLOC volunteers manning the coffee house.

Provo native Maureen Heagany is one of those volunteers. Seliger is reading "The Lord of the Rings," but he finds this Brigham Young University student far more captivating.

Seliger now begins to wake up at 5 a.m. each day — on purpose. And the strange hours aren't hurting his game. ESPN is calling him the hottest goaltender at the Salt Lake Games. He has shut out Slovakia, with its lineup of NHL scorers, and has allowed just three goals in wins over Austria and Latvia.

He's tickled when hockey legend Wayne Gretzky surprises him outside the locker room to congratulate him for the shutout.

But Heagany's opinion turns out to mean more to him than ESPN's — or Gretzky's.

"I thought he was the hottest goalie too," she said slyly Friday on the eve of the pair's wedding tonight at Provo's Riverside Country Club.

This Olympic love story developed at world-record speed.

"I went to the coffee house five times a day and stayed for hours," Seliger says. "My whole free time I spent in the coffee house."

His whole free time he spent with Heagany.

Seliger lifted underdog Germany into the medal round, where it lost all three games to dream teams from the United States, Sweden and Canada. But Seliger nearly led Germany to an upset of Canada at The Peaks Ice Arena as Heagany watched a hockey game for the first time in her life.

"I played well because I had such a fun time," Seliger says. "The Olympics was the best time I've ever had. I told myself if I had a chance to go to the next Olympics, I wouldn't go because it could only ruin perfect memories."

Seliger and Heagany went to a movie. And Seliger waited for her on his last day in Salt Lake City when she was late for work.

"That was the sweetest thing," Heagany says.

E-mails led to phone calls, which by April lasted six hours at a time.