 "Photo: Submitted photo")
Keisha Hebrink is beautiful, very busy and, by her own admission, also a bit gullible.
So she believed her boyfriend Josh when, on Christmas Eve 2008, he said he needed to stop at their church to check his dad's mailbox.
But mail wasn't on Josh's mind that night. Marriage was, and as he parked and walked around the front of the vehicle, Keisha finally began to suspect something.
The Minnesota State senior knew a proposal was coming, but thought it would probably happen on Valentine's Day. Instead, the proposal came that night, on a chilly Christmas Eve, in the parking lot of Bethany Reformed Church in Clara City, Minn., in the same spot where the two had shared their first kiss.
"I knew it was going to be a special holiday," said Keisha, who married Josh on Dec. 19, 2009. "I just didn't know which one."
'It's like two full-time jobs'
Josh was nervous about proposing, but not as nervous as he was a week earlier, when he met with Keisha's parents to ask for their daughter's hand in marriage.
"There's a couple of things you don't want to do in life and that's one of them," he said. "I was so nervous, I was beet red in the face and I looked like I was about to faint."
Keisha's dad noticed, and encouraged him to relax. Then he told Josh he couldn't be happier to see the two get married.
The nerves were worth it for Josh, a 2009 MSU graduate who met Keisha in seventh grade and later attended MACCRAY High School with her. He describes her as a friendly, caring and family-oriented person. But Keisha is also many other things.
She's a mass communications major involved in both the Society of Professional Journalists and the Public Relations Student Society of America. She's a pageant queen who's held several titles and once finished in the top ten of a national competition. She's done some modeling, including for MMG in New York City, and spent her 21st birthday in Chicago, where she appeared in a bridal fashion show.
Life following the couple's honeymoon in Florida has been more grueling than glamorous, though. In her final semester at MSU, Keisha is interning at the Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota, taking 22 credits and splitting time between Mankato and the newlyweds' home in Clara City, about two hours away.
"To balance the school life with the married life and everything that goes with married life - whether it's just house chores or spending time together - is a lot of work," Keisha said. "It's like two full-time jobs."
'She can do it all'
If anyone can handle it, though, it's Keisha Hebrink. So says longtime friend and former roommate Ashley Decknatel, an MSU student who met Keisha years ago when the two attended the same daycare.
"She's so good at balancing things and so level-headed," Decknatel said. "She's one of the girls who can do it all. It's a lot to handle but she's the one who can do it."
She's also someone who's there for her friends when they need support.
"She's so positive and believes anything can happen," Decknatel said. "If you have a bad day, you can always talk to Keisha and she'll turn it around."
Perhaps Keisha's fervent belief that anything can happen helps explain why so much has, in fact, happened to her. She's been named everything from high school homecoming queen to 2008 Miss Minnesota American Coed. In 2006 she won the National American Miss Minnesota crown and wound up placing first runner-up nationally in "Miss Personality" and in the top ten overall.
But Keisha didn't spend years training for pageants. In fact, the first major pageant she entered, National American Miss Teen Minnesota, she did at the bidding of a friend.
"My senior year in high school a friend of mine was actually going to do one, and it was her first time," Keisha said. "So she said, 'You should just do it with me,' and so I signed up for it."
She ended up winning, which opened up opportunities for modeling and acting school. She put college off for a year to pursue those opportunities, spending time in both California and New York.
But Keisha isn't particularly enamored with pageants anymore, or even with modeling. She has other things on her mind now: graduating, pursuing such interests as broadcast journalism or event planning and, of course, her marriage.
'I have been blessed'
Decknatel remembers Keisha expressing a desire to get married even as a freshman. Now she is, to her high school sweetheart, taking on the responsibilities and priorities that accompany married life.
Twenty-two credits. An internship. A marriage. Keisha Hebrink is beautiful, and by her own admission, a bit gullible. ("I'll believe anything," she jokes.) Most of all, she is very busy.
But she doesn't mind.
"I have been blessed with so many opportunities and experiences," she said. "I wouldn't change it for anything."
Derek Wehrwein is a Reporter staff writer
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