[ALBSA-Info] Love Story

[Agron Alibali]

The New York Times 
October 28, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final 
WEDDING: VOWS; 
Nancy O'Neill and Phillip Van Horn 

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE 


WHEN the bombs stopped falling in Kosovo in the summer of 1999, Nancy Taylor O'Neill went to work. As a deputy public affairs officer for the State Department, she helped the province get back on its feet, creating a network of local radio stations, establishing Internet centers to help entrepreneurs and doing advance work for visiting dignitaries as they tried to rebuild the war-torn region. 

Among the visitors was President Bill Clinton, who arrived in Pristina just before Thanksgiving to call for reconciliation between the Serbs and Albanians and to boost the morale of American troops. This was his last stop on a frenetic 10-day sweep of southeastern Europe, and when Mr. Clinton's plane finally lifted off from Camp Bondsteel, the exhausted foreign service workers on the ground celebrated with a "wheels up" party. It was at that party that Phillip James Van Horn, now 34, an officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency who was setting up the first defense attache office in Kosovo, met Ms. O'Neill, now 29. "I thought, 'Wow,' " he said. "She's gorgeous, she's the smartest person I know and she's wicked funny." 

She thought the same thing. "I was sitting on a windowsill and he introduced himself," she said. "I thought, 'Oh, he's adorable.' " Her friend, Lori McLean, did some quick reconnaissance, transmitting from Ms. O'Neill the words Mr. Van Horn yearned to hear: "Yeah, I'd go out with him." 

Their romance took off, aided by the primitive nature of their surroundings. Running water was scarce, electricity intermittent, privacy nonexistent and mud everywhere. Without power, there was little home cooking, so everyone flocked to bars at night and made their own entertainment. 

"It was one of those experiences where everything is so intense and you're working around the clock every day and you love the people you're with because they're so dedicated and adventurous," Ms. O'Neill said. "If you can have a great time with somebody in Kosovo, you know it will work." 

Life consisted of darting among the ruins in armored vehicles, talking on hand-held radios and speaking in code to dodge the spies. Ms. O'Neill's code name was "Xena," as in warrior princess, and Mr. Van Horn's was "Chogi 5," based on a Thai term meaning someone who attends to someone else. 

Given Kosovo's lack of amenities, Mr. Van Horn's romantic gestures took considerable forethought. For example, Kosovo had no florists, so he arranged for their compound's routine delivery of supplies to include two dozen long-stemmed red roses for Ms. O'Neill on Valentine's Day. 

With the change in administrations in January 2001, Ms. O'Neill was back in Washington and out of a job. Mr. Van Horn stayed with her while awaiting his next assignment, which turned out to be in The Hague, where the two now live. Ms. O'Neill shuttles back and forth from The Hague to Kazakhstan on behalf of an international oil consortium, and has begun mulling the possibility of helping to rebuild Afghanistan when the fighting ends. ("I love post-conflict situations," she said.) 

Only days after President Bush's inauguration, Mr. Van Horn decided to propose. "We hadn't talked about marriage, but I knew it was the right thing to do," he said. He picked out a sapphire and diamond ring and hid it in one of her notebooks. The bulge in the notebook caught her eye. 

They were married on Oct. 20 at St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Washington, where her mother was married in 1970 and her grandmother in 1945. They held a luncheon reception at the nearby Sulgrave Club. Heath Quinn, Mr. Van Horn's best man, said that Mr. Van Horn had always lived a charmed life, and that finding Ms. O'Neill in a war zone was further evidence. "He could walk through a mud puddle and find a dollar stuck to his shoe," Mr. Quinn said. 

As he raised a glass of Champagne for a toast, Mr. Van Horn was well aware of his outrageous fortune. "If I could," he said, "I would toast myself." 
 http://www.nytimes.com 

GRAPHIC: Photos: WASHINGTON, OCT. 20 -- The best man toasts the couple at the reception at the Sulgrave Club, top. Above, the maid of honor helps the bride with her train. (Photographs by Leslie E. Kossoff) 


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