When Kevin Manning met a friend for drinks at The Evergreen Grill in 1997, he didn't know he would walk out with a date - and a future wife.

"When I got engaged, I was sitting on the same stool she asked me out on," Kevin Manning said. "There's a lot of history in the place."

Mariah Manning, an Evergreen waitress at that time, asked Kevin Manning to go out with her, and two years later, the two MSU alumni returned to the restaurant, where he asked her to marry him.

The Evergreen Grill, 327 Abbott Road, has been their place for pre-football meals and meeting up with friends.

But they walked out of the grill for the last time on Dec. 31 after lunch with their two children, Noah, 2, and Sophie, 3 months.

The Evergreen Grill, which some have called an East Lansing landmark, closed on New Year's Eve, after almost 17 years.

Owner Mary Welsh, a 1975 MSU alumna, saved the Mannings' two stools for them.

On Wednesday, Chef Matt Wilson and other employees continued clearing out the restaurant and helped put extra food into a truck to be distributed to area shelters. About 2,000 pounds of food has been collected so far, said Wilson, who has worked there for three years.

"A lot of us put a lot of heart and soul into the place," he said. "Two weeks ago, it was a bustling, busy restaurant. Now, it's a shell."

Chairs are stacked and labeled "sold," while menus once used by everyone from East Lansing residents to Bill Cosby sit in piles along the bar.

"Everyday I take calls - people trying to make reservations still," Wilson said. "It's definitely more than just citywide."

After working 10 years at The Peanut Barrel Restaurant, 521 E. Grand River Ave., Welsh opened The Evergreen Grill with two other partners in 1988.

The former East Lansing Post Office had already been transformed into a restaurant called the Pantree before it turned into The Evergreen Grill.

Since its opening, Welsh said the restaurant maintained its status as a fine-dining establishment.

Although the business continued to expand its customer base, rent and operation costs began to soar. After trying to negotiate the lease, Evergreen's landlord WLM Properties Limited Liabilities Co. and Welsh could not strike an agreement, and she was forced to close the grill.

"It was a decision I had to make for the sake of the business," Welsh said, adding that employees would have been negatively affected.

Kris Metzger, manager of WLM Properties, said Evergreen was the company's first tenant in that building and there are no hard feelings about the closing.

"We tried a bunch of different ideas, and they didn't work," Metzger said. "We were just unable to reach an agreement."

The owner said she is still processing the situation because the closing happened so fast.

"I've just been doing a whole lot of crying," Welsh said. "I always thought I'd go right from here into the cemetery."

East Lansing Councilmember Vic Loomis, a lifelong East Lansing resident, said he used to go to the building when it was the post office. The grill also is where he was set up with his wife, Nancy, on a blind date.

"The Evergreen Grill had a certain ambiance to it," Loomis said. "It's just an unfortunate situation that we've lost it."

Loomis said he didn't know it was going to close as soon as it did, otherwise he would have gone there one last time.

Although Welsh is donating food and furniture, she will leave the store without taking any souvenirs. No single item or memory could sum up her experience, she said.

"There's not one thing that means more to me than another," she said. "It's been a great time."