Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How did you propose to your wife?

Stupidly.

In the parking lot of the clinic

On her birthday.
Gave her the speech and the gift.
Of course she said yes....who wouldn’t.

We dated for 2 years, just seemed to happen. Dec 20, 1975.

"The Warden"s maternal grandpa asked her grandma - "Wanna come cook for me?"

You wanna keep doing my dishes forever?

My parents were getting assigned to a US Embassy in East Africa

I was 18, about to be homeless when Dad did the Colonel Kurtz thing with the house, the cars, the horses, the boat, the dogs.

Lived in my girlfriend's bedroom for a couple weeks. 😄

How many months!!!!

In a Jaguar E Type, right before she dropped me off to go brief for a flight in Pensacola where I was in flight training. Still with me 38 years this December 18.

I told my wife that there was no question WHETHER we’d get married, but only of WHEN.

We’d known one another 7 months & 2 days on our wedding day.

that story deserves more than 2 sentences - the Kurtz part, not the marriage

I wrote a poem after we were married that sums it up.

We loved each other very much
And as the time went by
We were married one bright June day
And had the kid in July

I had just finished my second year at the local community college, which was a branch of the University of Kentucky. A recruiter came by and was interviewing students to come to a college in Eastern Kentucky which had a very good that had to do with the reclamation of the strip mines for coal. He said the coal companies were paying big bucks for those students to come and work for them. My wife and I were dating, and she said that if I went, I wasn't going without here.............I said, "I guess you're asking me to marry you."

That was almost 50 years ago, and I still tell everybody that she asked me, not me asking her. To be honest about it, I guess we were so much in love with each other, that both of us just assumed we were going to marry.

I really don't remember. It's been 35 years but the chill factor makes it feel like 48.

I didn't propose, she did.

Had her legs pinned back on her chest deep stroking it and put a ring on her toe

This^

I was working seasonally for the forest service and trapping in the winter. We had a late winter and ended up working later in the fall than planned. I still needed to get my traps out as I was long lining for coyotes and covering a lot of ranches every year. Missing the early part of the season was missing a lot of income for me so I was checking traps and skinning at night and working the days and getting very little sleep. I took Etta with me one night to check traps and ended up catching a pile of coyotes that night. I hung the first one up and was about to start skinning when she came out to the fur shed and said, "if you'll show me how, I help you skin." I figured I'd never get a better offer than that and proposed on the spot. We were married in February between the end of bobcat season and the beginning of spring beaver and muskrat season. Romantic cuss ain't I.

I dragged my feet a bit.... got her to move across the state with me and leave her good job, later bought a house together.

I then got her dad to smuggle her two great grandmas diamond engagement ring that had been out together on one ring and was supposed to go to her mom but grandma didn’t like her. He came up with some kind of lie to get it out her. Like it needed to be cleaned or something.

Anyway, I kept dragging my feet and we were headed for a flight to see my family for Christmas. She took the dogs to the kennel, so I dangled the ring on fishing line from the bannister where she would have to run into it, then hid around the corner and waited for the gasp when she came back home.

Later updated the ring and band with the same two diamonds

Mistakenly.

I had been dating her about a year and a half and took her from here (North Texas) to Michigan City, Indiana for Christmas, mainly to see her Grandma. I got a pretty warm reception and at a party one night one of her uncles asked me if I intended to make an honest woman of her. I told him I was seriously considering it. Later that night on the way back to Grandma's where we were staying, I pulled off the road and asked her if she'd like to be my wife. Felt pretty weird to do that, but I did it.