I knew right away when I saw the ring that Amanda wanted it was go-time. The next day I texted Jen and got the ball rolling and had about 2 months to get all the things aligned for the proposal. It started with a few planting of a couple of ideas full of little misleading comments…

“I’m think maybe closer to spring and summer”

“Maybe when it’s warmer and all the snow is gone”  

Honestly, If I could have done it the next day I would have… in my heart I wanted to marry this girl up so fast. Actually the truth is about 2 weeks into us dating I thought to myself… “if this is the real her and this is the person she truly is… I’m in”… we both were in our 40s and been through a few heart breaks and long relationships that broke parts of us. But we both believe that hurt people, hurt people and we didn’t want to hurt each other. So the antithesis of that is HEAL PEOPLE… HEALS PEOPLE. We both needed to go through the healing process to be able to help be part of each other’s healing process.

So back to the story… I knew that the first week of Jan was packed with our 1 year anniversary, Amanda’s Birthday, doing a small project with bon appetite and I was filming a show in NYC. Amanda has never been to NYC so to throw her off I planned our NYC trip… filled with Broadway Shows (Lion King), Time Square, Chelsey Market, One World Trade Center visit and many other iconic NYC visits.   With all these things happening it was easy to throw her off.  

In the back end… I was getting things ready with my friend Tran who was a New Yorker for about 20 years and now lives in Minneapolis. Every 4-6 weeks he still goes back to the home office in   NYC for work. Office is based out of there but can live here. Also his love language is logistics and planning. We planned all the logistics together and came up with the idea of central park. Tran basically created a Pinterest board of ideas and we got it down to a basic idea but flexible if needed because we knew weather might be an issue.  

The Bethesda Fountains was a perfect background. We also had the arches to give us cover because the week of Operation: Wife-Her Up (what I called this tactical mission) it looked like it was gonna rain. Before I left MPLS I wrote her a card telling her what she means to be and how I felt about her. Telling her that I knew I wanted to marry here a few weeks into our dating and the hardest part was waiting for almost a year to ask her. Then I need it with “will you marry me” on the card. Tran got a box that looked like a book and he took it and flew out with it a few days after we left for NYC.

The day of… we woke up early in the morning… I went out to grab bagels for her (she wanted to eat a NYC bagel)… then we got ready to go for walk through Central Park. I stated to her that she might want to sear something “nice”, because I know she likes taking photos. Remember all week already we were sight seeing… running around NYC… celebrating her bday and the day before I was filming on set all day and this was our last day in NYC so Central Park was part of our last space to see on our list.   

She chose to be comfy in her, what is coined, “Homeless Chic” style and I was thinking to myself… welp that’s what the photos are gonna be and that’s what you’ll have forever.. LOL. Go to Central Park (CP) and were started walking towards the center of the park. While Tran was texting me his location the whole time and he also had my location so he kept telling me where to go.  

So as we start walking through the park she stayed “hey babe I want to go shopping… let’s do on 5th Ave (where all the famous shops are in Midtown only a few mins walk from CP). I stated, Hey how about we walk a little and see what CP looks like.. we’ve made it this far already. Here’s the deal.. the proposal was gonna happen around 12pm… but the weather looked bad and according to my weather app it was gonna rain around noon and so Tran and I audible and said we need to move it up to 11am for the proposal. So to get form our hotel to CP was about 45-50mins.. the walk itself was about 20mins… we got out of the hotel a little later than expected so I need to double time to get to the spot. While walking Amanda was saying how she wanted to stop at the carousal and ride it first and then also wanted to go shopping and I needed to keep her focused.  

We got to the area and it filled with people…. Here’s the plan by one of the pillars Tran put the box laying by it with some white rose pedals around it. I was gonna walk up to it and ask her… “what’s this” then slowing pick it up and open it. Then pretend to tie my shoes while she sees a card in there with her name on it. While she reads the card I would reach into my pocket and pull out the ring and place it on her finger and ask her to marry me. Again this was the plan but like famous world champ boxer, Mike Tyson said "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."   

We got up to the box… there was also a musician there playing music on a violin (not planned at all). There were a bunch of people watching him play. I see the box and walk towards it and I stated to Amanda,  

“Hey what’s that” she then answers “babe it looks like a memorial that someone left behind”…

 she takes a picture of it.. then I pick it up and she like…

“what are you doing”… since it looked like a book I said…  

“let’s see what book this is… “

She opens it… now I feel weird because people are around and I don’t like to do public things… I stated that I needed to tie my shoes I go down… while simultaneously reaching into my pocket to pull out the ring.. took me little longer than expected because it got caught in my pocket (that’s what 3.5 carats ring do LOL)… about to put it on her finger then she crying because she’s realizing what’s happening and also reading the card. I’m about to ask her the question “will you marry me” and now she leans down between her giggling and tears and kisses me right when I was about to ask her the big question. 

“Babe is this happening”

Now I’m on my knees and it’s starting to hurt but the main thing is I haven’t asked her the question. I stand up and she hugging me and kissing me and I pull away and stated:

“Hey hey… you got to let me ask you the question”

She said… Yes Yes… I asked her the question and she said yes. ThenI said to her…

“Tran is right to our left and he’s been taking pictures and so try not look weird LOL”

She was like… I’m a mess… while all this is going on I notice that the musician has changed his music to a very romantic song to align with what was going on. A very nice touch and later I dropped a tip in his tip box with me saying thank you to him.  

After all this Tran comes over and hugs us and says  congrats then we walk around central park taking pictures. Right after the pictures were done it started to rain so we missed the rain exactly by 35mins.  

After we were done Amanda asked me if she should text her family. I told her welp here’s the thing… I told my family, your family, your friends and my friends about a month ago that I was gonna do this and so they all know and have been waiting to hear from you. She was taken back and said wait they all knew… I stated… yep for a while now.