Rather than concoct an elaborate stunt, Robert Gaiser, Jr., simply waited for the right moment to propose to longtime girlfriend Leslie Wyeth. After 10 years, what was 10 days? So, he carried the garnet engagement ring everywhere, just in case the mood struck.
One Monday night, he suggested biking a few laps around Wanaka Lake in Lafayette on the way home from dinner at Proto’s Pizza. The perfect September evening unfolded before him – still warm, with just a hint of autumn. The sun slid westward, highlighting the clouds with orange and pink.
“I’m feeling ‘it’ at this point,” recalls Gaiser, 31, a recent nursing school graduate. “When I started thinking about it, my heart rate exploded.”
He had to sit down, so Wyeth rode in small circles nearby, waiting for Gaiser to recover. That only made him more nervous, so he asked her to sit too. “I say, ‘Man, I can’t get my heart rate down,”‘ remembers Gaiser. “I take her hand and put it on my chest so that she can feel my heart racing.”
The unrehearsed proposal that followed stunned the naturally effusive Wyeth. She did not cry, did not scream, did not move. “Every year, since about year four, I had been like, ‘Oh, he’s going to propose this year,’ ” says Wyeth, 29, an educational consultant. “But, that year, I said, ‘It doesn’t matter if he proposes or not because we’re really happy.’ …Marriage is marriage, and you know, I had kind of gotten to the point that I didn’t expect it.”
The couple married June 17, 2006, behind the Millennium Harvest House in Boulder. A friend led the self-sanctified ceremony. They promised each other to “be faithful and honest in every way, to honor the faith and the trust you place in me.”
Freelance journalist Roxanne Hawn welcomes suggestions for future Vows columns, denverpostvows@wispertel.net.
