Love in a Longworth elevator

When Bret Schothorst is in an elevator, he usually presses “close,” determined to get to wherever he’s going. But one time, two years ago, he kept the elevator on the Longworth House Office Building’s fifth floor open for one reason only: a voice.

That voice belonged to Lauryn Bernier, 24, a long-haired brunette with olive skin and green eyes who was working for Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.), just down the hall from Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), Schothorst’s boss at the time.

Schothorst, 25, blond with fair skin and blue eyes, fell in love with her on the spot.

It wasn’t one of those passionate elevator moments, such as the ones routinely played out by Derek Sheperd (aka “McDreamy”) and Meredith Grey on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” The love between Schothorst and Bernier might have been instantaneous for him, but the relationship took several months to unfold.

The pair barely said anything in the elevator that day.

It was a Friday evening and Schothorst was on his way to the Hawk ‘n’ Dove to meet friends for drinks. Bernier was in a serious relationship with a long-time college boyfriend. Schothorst wasn’t looking for a serious romance. He had just moved to town two months prior from Grand Forks, N.D., and was adjusting to life in Washington after a recent breakup with his girlfriend of two years.

After the elevator ride, Schothorst told a friend, “I need to find out who she is.” She, too, wanted to know who he was. So one day she got bored and called Pomeroy’s office and asked who the defense guy was who manned the front desk.

Roughly a month later, they came face to face at the Front Page. Bernier was with her boyfriend; Schothorst was with friends.

“It was awkward,” Bernier recalled. “I think we talked about Gold’s Gym.”

Fast-forward to February 2006, and life had marched on. Bernier realized she and her college boyfriend were moving in different directions and broke up with him. Meanwhile, Schothorst had “friended” Bernier on MySpace.

Then Jessica Simpson came to Capitol Hill for Operation Smile. She visted Longworth’s fifth floor, and hundreds of aides and visitors flooded the hallways. “Everyone wanted to get a glimpse of her,” Schothorst explained.

Once everyone returned to their offices, Schothorst shot Bernier an e-mail. “Well, that was a huge waste of time. We’ll never get those 45 minutes back,” he wrote.

Single at this point, Bernier was ready to flirt back. She asked him to lunch someday. That day happened in late March at Così on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Bernier was confused by the lunch. She thought to herself, “What’s this, is this a real date?” His thoughts were different: “I was nervous. I only ate half my sandwich. I did pay for lunch.”

Something to note: In their dating histories, he typically dated blondes, while she was usually attracted to guys with dark hair and dark eyes. The short of it was that Schothorst couldn’t have strayed more from type if he tried.

“I couldn’t get a good read,” she recalled. “There was good chemistry, but I wasn’t sure if he was interested in me.”

Still, she persisted and invited him to watch basketball with friends at the Rhino Bar and Pump House. “He kept putting his hand on my back, my lower back,” she said.

Nonetheless, it was an innocent evening and nothing happened.

The next day she was off to Atlantic City, N.J., but they continued to exchange flirtatious text messages.

Upon her return, Schothorst asked her out, but it wasn’t in the way she expected. “Hey, let’s hang out,” he said. “You want to go to the gym with me?”

Her response was less than enthused. “I didn’t necessarily want to go to dinner, but I didn’t want to go to the gym,” she explained. So she told him: “I think the gym’s a bad idea. Let’s do something outside.”

They settled on bowling.

During the game, Schothorst leaned in and surprised her with a quick peck on the lips. “My stomach dropped,” she recalled.

After that date, their relationship began to take on an ease that is hard for either to fully explain. There were no awkward silences. There was no awkward wondering of who should call whom or when.

“There were no stupid dating rules,” Schothorst said. “It was so relaxed. Just the most relaxed thing ever.”

Eight months later, Schothorst proposed. The couple married on Sept. 1 at Georgetown Lutheran Church. Their “raucous” reception was held at the Capitol Hill Club with a DJ and 200 political aides, family and friends. They plan to honeymoon someplace warm and tropical in December.

Despite the fact that they belong to different political parties, the two have the giddy glow of a newly married couple that cannot be shattered by political differences. Schothorst now works as an aide on the House Oversight Committee’s Health Office. They say their different politics make no trouble for them.

“We’ll give each other a little ribbing,” said Bernier, who now goes by Schothorst, adding that she’ll say things like, “This is why the world is going to s—t.”

More seriously, she notes, “We keep politics out of the house. We get it all day long anyway.”