How to Make a Marriage Proposal
At least here's how I did it
Today Tara and I celebrate our 35th anniversary.
In many ways, it was a miracle that we ever came together. Before we got engaged we hadn’t even spent 30 days in each other’s company—because we lived thousands of miles apart.
I resided in Palo Alto back then, caught up in a mad and hectic time of life—balancing multiple vocations (music, writing, teaching, business). Tara was on the other side of the continent, living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. There she was pursuing her vocation as a dancer and choreographer, while also teaching dance at the ritzy Chapin School.
I was visiting my brother Dana in New York, and met Tara by chance. We were set up on a blind date. I’d never gone on a blind date before—and this one made no sense. Why even test the waters with someone who lives three thousand miles away?
But our mutual friend Sedra Varga insisted that Tara and I would hit it off. And Sedra had an amazing track record as a matchmaker—playing a role in connecting ten couples who later got married. So when Sedra says she has found your perfect match, you don’t ask questions. You just take the phone number she gives you, and make the plunge.
At least that’s what I did.
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But there was a problem from the start. My trip to New York was almost over, and Tara was busy with dance rehearsals. There was only a one hour slot where our schedules were both open.
So we met over drinks for that one hour.
What can you really tell about someone in one hour? Not much. But there really was a spark during those sixty minutes—and we both felt it. Tara was passionate about dance—the same way I felt about jazz. Our world views were in alignment. And she was poised and smart and attractive.
Yes, I was smitten.
I’m not sure what expectation I’d had for the blind date. But it exceeded them on all levels. Then the hour was over, and I went back to California. Tara returned to her world of dancing and teaching and whatever else she did to fill her days.
Even so, that hour was hard to forget for both of us. So we both found excuses to take cross-country trips—making a few more dates possible.
Still, this was all craziness. How can you build a strong relationship when you are three thousand miles apart? It gradually became clear to me that we would either need to break up or get married. And I had no intention of breaking up with Tara.
That’s when I started planning a marriage proposal. But what did I know about proposals?
Nothing. I’d never made one before, or even thought about it.
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But even in my clueless state, I knew two things—mostly from reading books about knights and chivalry: (1) I would have to get down on one knee when I asked the question, and (2) I would need a diamond ring.
The knee part I could figure out on my own, but diamonds were a grand mystery to me. I’d only bought them for the stylus on my audio turntable—but I doubted that those kind of diamonds would get me through a proposal. So I consulted the only expert on this subject that I knew, namely my mother. With her help, combined with an indecent amount of money, I managed to obtain a ring.
But I still needed to figure out where to do the deed—and time was running out. Tara would arrive at San Francisco Airport in a few days, and this was going to be my chance. Failure was not an option.
I found that my grand education in literature was of little help here. I didn’t have time to go through the whole Mr. Darcy routine, and I definitely lacked the boldness of Rhett Butler.
I feared I would end up like Pierre in War and Peace, who is so confused by the prospect of proposing that he never actually gets the words out of his mouth. He is only saved when his future father-in-law interrupts the proceedings and congratulates Pierre on the couple’s betrothal. In other words, the poor fool got engaged without ever proposing.
As Tolstoy might have said: There are many ways a marriage proposal can go wrong, but only one way it goes right—with an affirmative response. And it’s easy to overthink things. According to popular legend, former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan was so oblique in his approach to future spouse Andrea Mitchell that he had to propose three times before she understood what he was talking about.
I could easily see myself doing the same—launching into some long-winded prologue. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for two individuals….
Oh, fiddlesticks, that’s how you start a revolutionary war, not a marriage.
Having exhausted Austen and Tolstoy and even the Founding Fathers, I turned to the contemporary world, and did actual research (at least I’m good at that). I wanted to learn how other couples got through this hurdle. However, I discovered—much to my dismay!—that most frequent location for a marriage proposal in the United States is….
Can you guess it?
The most frequent location for a marriage proposal in the US is inside an automobile. Yes, they seal the deal while they’re merging on to the 101, or stuck in a jam on the 405, or just getting their kicks on Route 66.
This depressed me. I had already spent enough of my life behind a steering wheel. For my love life, I needed something more romantic.
(Okay, this was 35 years ago. Maybe things have changed. Proposals probably happen today via text messages, with some special emoji or acronym. Or maybe there’s a newfangled Uber-ish app where you hire an intermediary. Or, for all I know, the two parties have their AI agents negotiate terms of engagement. The mind reels at the possibilities.)
At this point, I turned to my friends for advice—always the last act of a desperate guy. “What’s the most romantic spot for a marriage proposal?” I inquired. And I got lots of responses. But their suggestions were almost entirely fancy restaurants.
That was better than a Honda Accord, but I wanted something more.
I wanted my proposal to happen in a place that was timeless and awe-inspiring. I wanted us to go back to the same spot fifty years later, and find that it was still there—and nothing had changed. It needed to be as eternal as our love.
I kept mulling this over, and struggled to find a solution. But the clock was ticking. Tara’s arrival was imminent. I needed to finalize my plan, and I still didn’t have a setting.
Then it came to me in a flash.
When I finally figured it out, the solution was obvious. I would go the most awe-inspiring spot in all of California—namely, the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge.
That would be a beautiful story for the kids and grandkids. Everybody in the world knows that bridge. Everybody loves its beauty and grandeur. And if we ever did reach a golden anniversary (= 50 years), we could celebrate it by returning to that golden bridge.
So I now had a place. I had a ring. And I had prepared a tiny speech to avoid Greenspanian ambiguity. But…
Ah, little did I know, but I still had a huge challenge facing me. The Bard of Avon got it right when he said that “the course of true love never did run smooth.”
That’s because, on the day of my planned proposal, a huge storm hit Northern California. A mega storm of cats and dogs and maybe even mid-sized livestock. But I refused to get discouraged.
Somehow I convinced Tara to come with me on an outing. (Hey, honey, lets go for a drive. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the Golden Gate Bridge in the middle of this maelstrom?)
When we got to the visitor’s parking area just across the Bay, I suggested that we take a stroll out on to the span. Tara thought I was crazy—and I must have seemed demented right then. The storm was intense, and nobody was walking on the Golden Gate Bridge that day.
The downpour was intense. The wind was wild too. But we bundled up, grabbed umbrellas, and started our trek across that huge span.
We didn’t actually get to the middle of the bridge. Instead I stopped when we got to the lookout area near the northern end—where there was enough space for me to get down on one knee.
But before I could do that, Tara saw something that caught her attention—and wanted to point it out to me. You can decided whether this was coincidence or destiny. I know if it happened in one of those literary novels I was talking about, I’d assume it was a symbol of sort.
But what comes next is just the plain truth. I’m telling you exactly what happened right before I popped the question.
Tara grabbed my arm and pointed to the big rock. No, it wasn’t the big rock on the ring, which was still in my pocket. She pointed instead to the big rock in the middle of the Bay—and declared to her future husband: “Look, there’s Alcatraz.”
Yes, right before I proposed marriage, my future wife was talking about prison
I didn’t let that slow me down. Nothing could stop me now—not even the prospect of a life sentence. So I asked Tara to reach into the pocket of my coat, and take out the small box that she should find there.
She did just that. And as she opened the ring box, I made my genuflection like a knight of old (only lacking the shining armor). And there in all the wind and fog and rain, I asked her to be my wife.
We have now been married thirty-five years, and I’ve never been quite so wet since that moment. We drove back to my apartment in Palo Alto, turned on the heat, and celebrated our betrothal over delivery pizza.
The delivery guy was surprised by the size of the tip. But I only do things like this once, and I was determined to get all the details right.
And that, my friends, is how to handle a marriage proposal. At least that’s how I did it back before all those apps and bots.
And so many years later, all three of us—me, Tara, and the bridge—are still standing strong. With some luck, we will still be standing for some time to come.
I chose a big rock formation in Joshua Tree National Park. It’s not going anywhere.
Good choice of location! I proposed to my now wife 50 feet under water on a coral reef in the Caymans. Luckily she understood my gestured proposal, delivered on one knee as required, and nodded yes).