Ex-UConn star Kara Wolters found love down below

	At 6-foot-7, it wasn't always easy for Kara Wolters to find guys to date. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Kara Wolters made her husband wear heels to their wedding.

Thick, chunky-soled heels.

"He loves me," Wolters said, giggling like that wasn't already obvious. After all, Sean Drinan did go through with marrying her.

But that's jumping ahead. The story starts with Wolters, who was the center on UConn's 1995 national title team, and just so happens to be 6-foot-7. Now tough as it is to find a decent man, imagine having to find a decent tall man.

"Let's just say there wasn't a line of boys at my door, waiting to take me to dances," said Wolters, 30, a merciful 15 years past her days as a 6-3 eighth grader.

Those same uninterested boys just kept calling her "Too Tall" and "Jolly Green Giant" right on into high school and when her older brother corralled one of his 6-foot-9 friends into being her prom date, she told herself not to ask him if any cash had been exchanged.

"I still don't know if he paid him," Wolters said this week, sounding only mildly curious.

Mildly because after that she went to college. And while she'd spent her years at Holliston (Mass.) High confidently reassuring herself basketball was more than a fair tradeoff for being largely -- pun intended -- undateable, at UConn she found the two pursuits were not mutually exclusive. All of a sudden, she was opening her door to a line of boys.

In college, Wolters discovered there were "a lot of guys that like big girls." Always something of a "girly-girl," she made sure she saw her manicurist nearly as often as the Huskies' trainer. She began taking serious pride in her outfits ("You'd better appreciate when a big girl looks good because it's a helluva lot harder," she said) and she reveled in the guys' team nicknaming her "Big Sexy."

Of course, as much as Wolters started growing into herself, as much as she started recognizing big could equal beautiful, that athletes could be feminine, and that if she were smaller, her "diva-ness would just be wasted," her pool still wasn't exactly as a big as regular girl's. She was still 6-7.

"Which means 6-4 is short," Wolters said. Shorter and she'd end up with some guy's hair gook on her shoulder. Taller "and they were usually dating these little things. It drove me nuts."

(That, incidentally, may just be the biggest aggravator for tall women. Ruth Lobo, whose 6-4 daughter Rebecca was Wolters' teammate at UConn, is still put out by the memory of all those tall boys passing her 5-11 self over for short girls at school dances. She once reamed out her 6-11 son Jason for playing that game, yelling, "When she hugs you, all she's listening to is your food digest. You could eat peanuts off her head.")

Wolters had her new confidence, though, so she sought out every tall man she could. Eventually she got to the point that she'd date anyone 6-8. No brains, no sense of humor, no smoochability, "it just didn't matter," she said. "If he was 6-8, I'd date him."

Then she met the 6-2 Drinan. He had her laughing long after they'd said good-bye. She figured he was perfect -- for her best friend. She tried setting them up, he looked at her like she was nuts, and when Wolters finally grasped it was her he was into, he claims she said, "Are you flirting with me? Because you really shouldn't. You're way too short for me."

"It sounds like something I would say," Wolters admitted, regretfully conceding her husband's favorite story isn't made up. "As a woman, you don't want to be overpowering."

But Drinan kept after her. Wolters asked her mother if she could really marry a short guy and her mother, laying on her death bed, told her, "You'd better quit with the short jokes or you're going to get a bottle on the head from above."

Wolters saw a shot of Katie Holmes bending down to embrace Tom Cruise. She realized the statuesque Brigitte Nielson and a bit-more-squat Flava Flav might be her favorite celebrity couple. Wolters' 6-9 brother brought her a niece and the directive that she'd have to counsel her through the sure-to-be gangly years, and Wolters started wondering if all this time she'd been looking for a tall man, she really should've been looking for a man who stood tall.

So yeah, Drinan wore those heels on their wedding day a year and a half ago. And for every other day, Wolters bought him the just right wedding present -- a stool.