Couple to marry on ‘Today’ show

A Boardman track standout is among 140 guests invited to the ‘Today’ set for the wedding.

BY RICK ROUAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

While her roommates were jet-setting to and from New York every week, Adriane Blewitt was dog-sitting.

She doesn’t mind, though. They had good reason to make the weekly trek.

Her roommates, Nick Cordes and Leigh Daniel, were appearing on the “Today” morning show, vying for an all-expenses-paid wedding. And they won. They’ll be married on the show Wednesday.

“They said, ‘What do we have to lose?’” Blewitt recalled. “I’m the dog- watcher while they’re away.”

Blewitt, a former Boardman track standout, came to live with the couple when she returned from Olympic training out West. Last summer, Blewitt fell short in her effort to qualify for the Olympics.

She met Cordes on the track team while attending Ashland University, where the betrothed couple now coach cross country. When she returned, Cordes and Daniel offered their extra room.

That was in November. Things got interesting in February, when the couple got engaged and soon after decided to try to win a wedding on national television.

The show narrowed the field to 40, then 10 and eventually four couples, and that’s when Cordes and Daniel had to start traveling to New York. Winning the competition comes with stipulations, though, as America now chooses everything from what the wedding party wears to the rings Cordes and Daniel will wear for the rest of their lives.

“We had to keep it quiet for a while,” Blewitt said.

The couple is used to secrecy. They met in Michigan while training to run in the Olympics in a program that forbade fraternization between participants. Cordes and Daniel kept their relationship a secret for a year before being kicked out of the program. They left and found collegiate coaching jobs at Cordes’ alma mater, Ashland.

“They had this forbiddien relationship,” said Blewitt, who hopes to find a collegiate coaching gig herself.

Now the dog-sitting has paid off. Blewitt is among the 140 guests invited to the “Today” show set to watch her friends get married.

“It’s been really superexciting,” she said. “I’m just happy I get to go.”

rrouan@vindy.com