Student Life Archives

The coat just sat there. Her boyfriend was in the gas station. To keep from peeking in his pocket, Missouri State University junior Kenvie Fischer had to play with a baseball she found on the ground.

She had no idea where they were going, but she had an idea of what might happen there.

She and Ben Hurst had been dating on and off since he was in eighth grade and she was in seventh.

“We started dating [again] at the end of April,” said Hurst. “Three weeks later, I went ring shopping.”

He knew how he would do it. He would pretend to tie a bow on her dress to get on one knee. He would give her flowers with a card that read, “Say yes.”

But while the question of “whether” was easy, the question of “where” was more difficult. He finally found a company called the Fremont Dinner Train. The owners renovated four 1940s train cars into moving restaurants which circle around 18 miles of scenic landscape in Fremont, Neb.

Location is often the most important factor for men who are proposing, according to Father Gary Braun of the Catholic Student Center.

“Most of the time they pick a place with a common significance,” said Braun.

For instance, about eight times in the past 16 years, students who met in the Catholic Student Center also became engaged there. One man met his wife at his adult baptism; she was the liturgical dancer for the ceremony. He proposed two months ago.

Not surprisingly, Father Braun has never proposed himself. But he does assist with many proposals every year. He sees enough proposals to recognize the patterns.

“There are always tons of tears,” he said. “Tons of tears.”

He has such a reputation in the marriage department that sometimes he gets unexpected requests.

Four years ago, a Jewish student called him. He had met his girlfriend at Washington University and had heard about Father Braun.

“I’d like to propose to her at the top of Brookings Tower,” said Allen Mattison. “I heard that if anybody could do this, it was you.”

Braun did in fact help Mattison, pull it off. Braun set up a table with wine at the center of the roof and left the door unlocked; that way the groom-to-be could pretend that he found it unlocked while he and his girlfriend were exploring the building.

At a certain point, the new fiancés both looked over the edge, and Braun was waiting to take their picture from the bottom.

But while men seem to be primarily concerned with the beauty or significance of the place, women are more concerned with timing.

“I know 20 to 30 couples where the woman proposed first,” said Braun, “and almost always it was a perfect moment rather than a perfect place.”

There is also a third option. Some couples go for the event, the spectacle. Braun remembers one Washington University couple, for instance, who shimmied up the drainpipe of the Athletic Complex and proposed at the top.

A New York medical student Yaron Markfeld also chose an unusual proposal.

His fiancée, law school student Natalie Benhamou, remembers not wanting to go to her Entertainment Law class on the day of a guest speaker. Her teachers were the lawyers who represent the rapper Nelly, and a friend convinced her to attend by saying that Nelly himself might show up.

Near the end of class, the teacher stopped the actual speakers, who were in fact record producers, to introduce another guest speaker. Before Markfeld walked out, Benhamou thought, “Oh my God, it’s actually Nelly!” She couldn’t have guessed what would actually happen.

In the end, there is not much I can say about how to propose. It’s done in almost any way you can imagine, any place, any time. There is not a lot in common from proposal to proposal.

But I can say one thing, based on the advice of Father Braun: bring some tissues.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Sexy Scene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.