The following story was submitted by a fan of The Howard Stern Show who wanted to share their ''Brush with Greatness'' with others.

Submitted by: Karen - 11/22/00

The story...

Well - after reading the rest of the stories already on the page, looks like I have a good one for you.

This past May (2000), the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, I went to dinner at Mercer Kitchen in downtown NYC. The restaurant has a lounge upstairs and you go downstairs to eat dinner. I was with 3 other people and we were sitting at the bar downstairs waiting to be called for our table. After we had been there about 5 minutes who comes down the stairs but Howard and a date. You cannot miss him - he is so tall and with all that hair he really sticks out in a crowd.

Anyway - they seated him right away. I was hoping that our table would at least be near his. Sure enough - they take us to our table a minute later and it's the one RIGHT next to his!!! I could not believe it.

Both tables were against the wall with chairs on the outside. Howard and his date both sat on the same side facing the wall. I dove for the seat facing him and for the rest of my dinner tried to hear every word they said! Unfortunately Howard turned most of his body towards the girl. It was pretty obvious that they were on a date. I also thought from their body language that it was maybe a first or second date.

The girl was very pretty - tall and blond. Howard was very polite with her, asking a lot of questions it seemed. They ate a cold seafood platter, drank sangria, skipped desert. He paid with cash.

We didn't speak to him or bother him in any way, I didn't want to ruin his evening.

Anyway - I thought it was amazing just sitting next to him. If you listen to the show, you know he talks about this restaurant all the time. They make his favorite, wasabi pizza or something like that.

One last thing - a couple of weeks ago some NY papers had pictures of him with a woman he is supposedly dating and it looked very much like the girl I saw, but I couldn't be sure.