Stephanie Nigro and her Marine husband Sal will be running the marathon together. Stephanie ran her first ever marathon last year as a Team Marine Parents member for the 2006 MCM.

Sal has been deployed to Iraq twice; his most recent tour of duty was with 1/10 Alpha. It was while Sal was deployed last year that Stephanie decided to run the Marathon. "I knew I would have some nervous time on my hands and it would be a good way to keep busy - and I guess it was that somehow doing the Marine Corps Marathon made me feel closer to him and like I was doing SOMETHING." Sal was definitely her main motivation on those long training runs. She said "I felt like I was running for him and the rest of 1/10." An added bonus: Sal was pretty proud of her too!

Stephanie and Sal have been together for 4 years. They married this summer when Sal returned from his second tour of duty to Iraq. They met when Sal was at school in Quantico and she was living in DC. Stephanie grew up in upstate New York, but has been living in Washington, DC - Alexandria - since college. When asked last year why she was running the Marathon, she repliled "When I met Sal, I knew nothing about the military and especially the Marine Corps. Since meeting him, I realized what absolutely incredible people the Marine Corps is made up of and how much they give up without most of the country ever realizing it. Since meeting more and more of the families (particularly on the MarineParents.com web site), I have never stopped being blown away by how much military families endure and how amazingly strong they are."