How We Met
Kyle and I met our freshman year at SUNY Oneonta through a mutual friend. A girl I had met at orientation, had previously gone to high school with Kyle. One weekend in early October, Kyle had a few home friends up to visit so we all met at a party. After leaving the party, we decided to head downtown to the bars. While getting in the taxi, we realized we had one too many people for the number of seats, so I had to sit on Kyle’s lap, after 10 minutes of meeting him. After the quick 5-minute taxi ride, we all tried to get into the bar. Everyone but Kyle and I got in. Seeing as his friends were visiting and looking for a fun night, Kyle waved them on to go into the bar and have fun. We both sat down outside the bar and instantly started talking like we knew each other for a while. If you know me, you know it can be hard to have me open up to at first, but once you know me, I don’t shut up. Weirdly enough, I instantly was open and talking to Kyle like we had been friends for years. Not saying it was love at first sight, but it was definitely something at first conversation. After that night, we decided to hang out the following weekend and from there on, we were pretty much together until he made it official on November 14th, 2010 by asking me to be his girlfriend.
how they asked
Kyle’s family has a small country house in Copake, a small town in upstate New York, near the Massachusetts border. We’ve made plenty of weekend trips up there since we began dating. In the summers, we would hike to Bash Bish Falls, a beautiful natural spring waterfall in Bash Bish Falls State Park for a refreshing swim, and in the fall, we’d go apple and pumpkin picking and hike to the waterfall with our dog, Bailey, to see the beautiful foliage. This year, we had our fall weekend set aside for September 21-23rd, the weekend before we left for a two week Europe trip to Amsterdam, London, and Ireland.
We had been dating close to eight years at this point, so discussion around engagement and our future was not unheard of. If you asked me before that weekend, I was convinced I would be getting engaged in Europe, until the night of September 21st. On our drive up to his country house, we were talking about the trip and getting engaged. He turned and looked at me and said “I’m sorry babe, but we’re not getting engaged in Europe as you’d hope. I’m still saving for the ring.”
Fast forward to the next morning. We woke up, took Bailey on a nice walk and then went out to the local diner for breakfast. After that, we went back to his house and got ready for the day of fall activities we had planned. As we drove to the apple orchard, Kyle stopped to grab me my favorite, a pumpkin latte, while we sang to Bruno Mars. The second Bruno Mars’ “Marry You” came on shuffle, he instantly said, “I don’t want to listen to this right now”. Weird, but now I know it was because of nerves from what was to come later that afternoon. When we arrived at the orchard, we took plenty of cute fall Instagram worthy pics, grabbed a ton of apples and some delicious apple cider donuts. From there, we decided to drive to the state park to take a nice walk to Bash Bish. When I asked Kyle if he wanted to stop and pick up Bailey, he refused and said she would be pulling the whole time. Again, weird since we loved bringing our dog on this walk.
From the time we got out of the car, to the waterfall, Kyle was weirdly quiet. I had to lead all conversations and almost pull conversation from him. After getting to the waterfall, we took a few pictures and then sat down observing others and the beauty of the waterfall. After 20 minutes of near silence from Kyle, I decided that it was time to leave. Little did I know, he was in his head about what he was going to say as he proposed. He agreed we could head back, but not before we took one last picture. Immediately after the last selfie, he turned with his arms around me, kissed me and began to finally speak.
“Baby, I love you. You’re my best friend. I want to come back here year after year with you. Nothing would make me happier than going to Europe with you as my fiancee. So will you marry me?” as he got down on one knee. I also thought I would be hysterically crying when the time came, but because it was so unexpected, I’m pretty sure I blacked out for a few seconds and was shaking while looking at the beautiful ring.
After I said yes and kissed him, I immediately screamed “Wait!” and took off the ring. I always knew when the moment came, I would have Kyle get back down on one knee with the ring and take a picture to send to my friends, asking “guys, should I say yes!?”. I’m pretty sure everyone around thought I either said no or was crazy.
As if the proposal wasn’t a big enough surprise already, he then told me our families and dogs were up above waiting for us to celebrate! In which, they, of course, made him reenact the proposal once more for their viewing.
