An Indy 500 Marriage Proposal Story

A good marriage proposal story can be better than the most romantic movie or the most love-filled novel. Knowing that it's real - that it's actually about two people madly in love - somehow makes me tear up and feel a swell inside. It can help you to imagine the day you’ll get engaged, or to remember the romance of the day your sweetheart popped the question. After all, there are few phrases in the English language that are more sweated over or rehearsed than "Will you marry me?"

If you're about to be engaged, try reading these stories to help you calm the nerves and feel prepared. Or, if you're a romantic like I am, read them just because sometimes it's great to be a teary-eyed sap inspired by strangers.

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My fiancée, Sheri and I just got engaged on May 29, 2010 and we’ve had so much fun sharing our story with friends, family and everyone else that wants to hear about it! I work for a software company and when I noticed a customer of ours tweeting about some contests regarding the Indy 500, it got me thinking about ways I could propose to Sheri. She is a huge race fan, loves cars and we’ve gone to the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400 together the past couple of years. I wanted to come up with a unique way to propose to her that incorporated some of her favorite things.

I contacted our customer, who was the Director of Digital Communications at Hare Chevrolet, and asked if I could get involved in one of their events to propose to my girlfriend. Keep in mind I had never spoken to this customer and this email was out of the blue. He responded in minutes and was immediately on board. Receiving the go ahead from the owners, he secured an invite for their Corvette owners-only event where we’d get to go by police escort to the track, gave me a Corvette to drive for the weekend and helped get permission for me to propose on the bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We had to contact both General Motors, who was sponsoring the event, and IMS officials in order to get clearance to get out of the car and step onto the track.

I had to have a cover story for all of this so I called Sheri one day at work and told her a client of ours had given my boss tickets to a Corvette event, but he couldn't make it. I also wrote an email explaining the event and had my boss send it to me so it'd look like it came from him. It mentioned that I would need to take the Flip camera to record some video so I could write a customer spotlight post for our blog and put up a video of it. Really I just wanted to be able to record everything without it being suspicious. Sheri was under the impression that this was all for work and didn't have the slightest clue.

She was just incredibly excited about getting to go to the event and didn't even know we'd get to drive a Corvette. I told her we’d be driving my Jeep and doubted they would let us on the track with it. I said we would most likely just meet everyone at the track for the dinner. She was still incredibly enthusiastic about it all and talked about it to her coworkers and friends during the two weeks leading up to the event. Throughout the whole planning process, I really came to appreciate the tight-knit community we have here in Indianapolis. I sent a few emails to complete strangers hoping for a response, and within hours I was connected to executives at the IMS, Chevrolet, Andretti Green Racing, and even Sheri’s favorite driver, Tony Kanaan. It was amazing how excited everyone was to help out and go out of their way for someone they had never met.

You can see the whole proposal for yourself in our video. Spoiler alert – she said yes!

By Austin Dillman.