Outrageous Marriage Proposals You Have to Read to Believe

Some grooms to be are really willing to go the extra mile to surprise their potential brides, so much so that all the normal down-on-one-knee-with-a-ring stuff looks like child's play. We caught up with some particularly adventurous types who were willing to share their over the top, totally outrageous marriage proposals.

Some men make it known that marriage will be a real cliff-hanger

When Jason Daniels wanted to propose to his rock-climber girlfriend, Melissa, he knew he would take her to the mountains for a good climb to do it, because nothing helps make a list of outrageous marriage proposals quite like a little danger. "She's always scaling a mountain because that's where she feels her calmest and most in her element, and that's exactly where and when I needed to catch her for the proposal. I hid the ring box inside the water bottle I had attached to my harness and started heading down a really steep cliff with her. She was a few jumps ahead of me, and when I caught up—about 250 yards above the regular ground level—I popped the question. We were in a dangerous spot though so we couldn't hug till we were all the way down. I got a quick 'YES!' and a peck on the cheek, and slid down a mountain as fast as I could. I couldn't wait to call our families." Find out the 13 things you need to do after getting engaged.

Go big on network TV or go home

When Marlon LeWinter proposed to Ashley Yanover, he knew a standard dimly-lit dining room at a popular restaurant just wouldn't be memorable enough. He managed to appear in the Today Show's outdoor audience and stage being picked as the audience members of the day to get inside the studio—Ashley thought it was fun but never caught on that something bigger was about to happen. As Ashley gave the hosts a helping hand reading from the teleprompter, Marlon went into full proposal mode, and she obviously said yes. You can see the whole adorable engagement here. Find out the truth behind these common marriage myths.

If you bring her to a serene lake, make sure you bring a hairdryer

When Marcus Rein proposed to Jessie Janis, he thought he planned the most perfect, dimly-lit sunset dinner on the dock of a local lake in their Michigan hometown. He set up a cafe-style table, two fabric-covered chairs, brought a picnic basket, and even hired a guitar player to strum softly—what he didn't plan was the weak wooden boards at the end of the dock where he would end up kneeling to propose. By the time he was mid-question one of the wooden boards came loose, shifted beneath Jessie, and she was tossed into the lake. "Luckily it was July, really warm, and I was obsessed with Marcus so I would've said yes no matter what, but falling in definitely made it one of the most outrageous proposals we've ever even heard of," Jessie shared.

Don't bring a ring to the top of a lookout point over the ocean

"I thought I was being brilliant and creative," shares Kirk Gunner. "I brought my girlfriend to her hometown in Hawaii to propose at the top of a lookout point over the Pacific. Everything was perfect including the pink-ish sky, my best friend as the photographer, and the weather, but when I proposed I brought a ring that was a little too big, and it slipped off her finger when we were hugging after her 'yes' and through the cracks of the lookout point's viewing deck. Somewhere in the Pacific off Kona there's a $5,000 ring if anyone is looking for buried treasure."

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He Saw a Sailor Kiss a Nurse in Times Square. Little Did He Know He’d Be Part of That Famous Photo.

I was in the Merchant Marines, and my ship had just returned from London. On August 14, 1945, I was in New York heading into Times Square, where there was a Pepsi-Cola canteen: Hot dogs were a nickel, and Pepsis were free.

That’s where I was going when I saw this sailor grab a nurse and kiss her.

Of course, I’d seen that more than once on the square. But in front of the couple were two photographers snapping away.

Just as that was happening, it came around on the news ticker on the side of a building: “The war is over! The war is over!”

I never gave that scene a second thought until a couple of years later, when the photo became famous. Then I took another look and said, “Hey, that’s me!” You can see my legs right behind them!

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A Husband’s Tragic Death Leaves His Wife With an Unforgettable Sign

Do you believe in signs? This wife's experience may just convince you.

My husband had passed tragically and unexpectedly the night before. I returned home the next morning with my sister-in-law, my emotional support. We sat in the upstairs loft, sharing stories about a man who’d left us too young. I glanced out the window and noticed a woodpecker on the roof. It appeared to be watching us.

A member of a species rarely seen here, the bird sat for almost 20 minutes as we reminisced. I affectionately named it after my late husband. It has been five years since he passed, and a woodpecker continues to appear at my weakest moments.

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Welcome to “Bomb Dog U,” Where Pooches Are Trained to Thwart Terrorism

When I first meet a young Labrador named Merry, she is clearing her nostrils with nine or ten sharp snorts before she snuffles along a row of luggage pieces, all different makes and models. They’re lined up against the wall of a large hangar on a country road outside Hartford, Connecticut. This is where MSA Security trains what are known in the security trade as explosive detection canines, or EDCs. Most people call them bomb dogs.

The luggage pieces joined shrink-wrapped pallets, car-shaped cutouts, and concrete blocks on the campus of MSA’s “Bomb Dog U.” Dogs don’t need to be taught how to smell, of course, but they do need to be taught where to smell—along the seams of a suitcase, say, or underneath a pallet, where the vapors that are heavier than air settle.

In the shrouded world of bomb-dog education, MSA is an elite academy. Its teams deploy mostly to the country’s big cities, and each dog works with one specific handler, usually for eight or nine years. MSA also furnishes dogs for what it describes only as “a government agency referred to by three initials for use in Middle East conflict zones.”

Strictly speaking, the dog doesn’t smell the bomb. It deconstructs an odor into its components, picking out the culprit chemicals it has been trained to detect. Zane Roberts, MSA’s former lead canine trainer and current program manager, uses a cooking analogy: “When you walk into a kitchen where someone is making spaghetti sauce, your nose says, Aha, spaghetti sauce. A dog’s nose doesn’t say that. Instinctively, it says tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, onion, oregano.” It’s the handler who says spaghetti sauce or, in this case, bomb.

MSA’s dogs arrive at headquarters when they are between a year and a year and a half old. They begin building their vocabulary of suspicious odors by working with rows of more than 100 identical cans laid out in a grid. Ingredients from the basic chemical families of explosives are placed in random cans.

Merry works eagerly down the row, wagging her tail briskly and pulling slightly on the leash. This is a bomb dog’s idea of a good time. Snort, snort, sniff, snort, snort, sniff, snort, snort, sniff. Suddenly, Merry sits down. All bomb dogs are schooled to respond this way when they’ve found what they’re looking for. No one wants a dog pawing and scratching at something that could explode.

“Good dog,” says Roberts. He reaches into a pouch on his belt for the kibble that is the working dog’s wage.

It would be tough to conceive of a better smelling machine than a dog. Thirty-five percent of a dog’s brain is assigned to smell-related operations, whereas a human brain lends only 5 percent of its cellular resources to the task. In her book Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, a psychologist at Barnard College, notes that while a human might smell a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee, a dog could detect a teaspoon in a million gallons of water—nearly enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools.

Where bomb dogs have really proved their mettle is on the battlefield. Before joining MSA as vice president of operations, Joe Atherall commanded Company C of the Marines 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in Iraq’s Al Anbar province. The unit had three dog teams attached to it.

“One day, intel directed us to a school, but we didn’t find a lot. Then we brought in the dogs,” recalls Atherall. “There were French drains around the outside of the school, and the dogs started hitting on them. When we opened them up, we found an extensive IED cache, small arms weapons, and mortar rounds, along with det cord and other explosive material.” Detonation cord is the dog whistle of odors, with nearly unsmellable vapor pressure.

“I loved those dogs,” says Atherall. “They were lifesavers.”

It is hard to imagine a more high-hearted warrior than a dog. The canines work for love, they work for praise, they work for food, but mostly they work for the fun of it. “It’s all just a big game to them,” says Mike Wynn, MSA’s director of canine training. “The best bomb dogs are the dogs that really like to play.”

This doesn’t mean that war is a lark for dogs. In 2007, Army veterinarians started seeing dogs that showed signs of canine post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We’re seeing dogs that are over-responsive to sights and sounds or that become hypervigilant—like humans that are shaken up after a car accident,” says Walter Burghardt, of the Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Caught early enough, says Burghardt, half the affected dogs can be treated and returned to active duty. “The other half just have to find something else to do for a living.”

Because of the emotional wear on the dogs, scientists have been trying to build a machine that can out-smell the animals. At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, scientists are working on ionization technology to “see” vapors the way a dog does—the same basic technology used by security officers at an airport but far more sensitive.

On the other hand, says Robert Ewing, a senior research scientist, dogs have been doing this job for years. “I don’t know that you could ever replace them.”

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This Grandson’s Eulogy for His Grandmother Will Touch Your Heart and Make You Long for Yours

"It didn’t take much to make her happy—a phone call, a card, a visit, or a kiss before saying good night. She lived to make our lives better and was proud of us."

Mary Foote of Harrison, Ohio, shared this heartfelt eulogy, which was delivered at the funeral of Vivian Rippy by Christopher Eckes, Mary’s nephew and one of Viv­ian’s grandsons. We include it here as a tribute to loving grandmothers everywhere.

It’s the little things that seem to stand out the most—her rolled up Kleenexes, her colorful muumuus, her iced tea and fried chicken, the aroma of her kitchen or a “yoo-hoo” from the other side of the door letting you know it was all right to come in.

I’ll remember her tapping her foot to Lawrence Welk or cheering for Johnny Bench (her favorite ball player). There are so many things that I can see and feel as if they had just happened.

I’m sure everyone here has memories much like mine. They are good memories, something we’ll always have to cherish. It isn’t often in our lives that we come across someone so special that that person stays with you forever. Grandma was that kind of person.

The only way to get hurt in this life is to care. Grandma cared more than most, loved more than most and was made to suffer more than most because of just how much she cared.

But no matter how many times she was knocked down or made to endure things that no one should, she just kept coming back; caring more and loving more—opening herself up to even more pain. Yet there were never any complaints or bitterness—it was the only way she knew how to live.

The kind of love Grandma felt for us was a love without condition. She may not have approved of everything we did, may not have liked some of the decisions we made, but she didn’t lecture, she didn’t judge. She just kept loving us, letting us know that she was there and if we ever needed her, we could count on her to listen, to comfort, to help.

She lived a simple life. It didn’t take much to make her happy—a phone call, a card, a visit or a kiss before saying good night. We were the most important people in the world to her. She lived to make our lives better and was proud of us.

To think that someone like her felt that way about us should make us all feel more than just a little good. We can never forget that there is a part of her in each of us, something that she gave to us and asked nothing for in return.

Money can be squandered and property ruined, but what we inherited from her cannot be damaged, destroyed or lost. It is permanent, and it keeps her from becoming just a wonderful memory. It allows her in so many ways to remain just as alive as always—alive through us.

There have been and will be times in our lives when situations arise where we’ll want so much to talk to her, be with her or ask her just what we should do. I hope that, when those times come, we can begin to look to each other and find that part of her that she gave to each of us.

Maybe we can learn to lean on each other and rely on each other the way we always knew that we could with her. Maybe then she won’t seem quite so far away.

So, for your wisdom, your humor, tenderness and compassion, your understanding, your patience and your love; thank you, Grandma. After you, Grandma, the mold was indeed broken. Thank you so much. I love you.

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The Utterly Brave Way a 9-Year-Old Student with Autism Saved His Teacher’s Life

A little boy who adores superheroes had an opportunity to become one.

An average school day at Oak Grove Elementary in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, took a deadly spin last April when fourth-grade teacher Madonna Kenser suffered a near-fatal allergic reaction to a dry-erase marker. Kenser inhaled the fumes while teaching the class using an overhead projector, when suddenly her throat began to close.

“I was having an asthma attack,” Kenser told KFVS12.com. “The students were watching and I knew I had to get to my desk [where my inhaler was].”

As the classroom of terrified nine-year-olds looked on, Kenser stumbled across the room but fainted before she could reach the device.

The class was stunned. Thankfully, one youngster, Brendon Garman, knew what to do. He jumped from his desk and darted toward the purse his teacher had been reaching for. Finding her inhaler, he then gave a woozy Kenser her first life-saving gasps.

It was a fearful moment, but Brendon credits his quick thinking to a scene he remembered from the movie Are We There Yet. In the scene, one of the main characters has an asthma attack and collapses. Another character rushes to his aid with an inhaler and is able to revive him.

“If I didn’t see that movie, I wouldn’t know what to do,” says Brendon.

After the rescue, he said, “You know Mrs. Kenser, TV’s not so bad, huh?,” Kenser told the news station.

Although she praises the entire class for their calm reaction, Brendon’s is the one she’ll likely remember most. Brendon has autism, a disability that can limit communication and social skills. She and Brendon’s family hope this experience will send the message that children with autism are gifted and hold the potential to do extraordinary things.

After all, Brendon’s actions saved Kenser’s life.

“I went to the doctor and he said 5,000 people die from the things that happened that day,” Kenser told KFVS12.com. “[If it weren’t for Brendon], there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be here.”

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