A Marriage Proposal — The Man Said Yes

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Last Saturday Jon and I celebrated the 11th anniversary of our engagement. Yesterday we celebrated the 43rd anniversary of our wedding day.

What’s the catch? If you were paying attention on Saturday, you noticed the date was February 29, 2020. Which is how last weekend got to be the 11th anniversary of that fateful marriage proposal. Eleven Leap Years ago, on February 29, 1976, I asked Jon to marry me.

He said yes.

Yesterday I presented Jon with a cornball wedding anniversary card with one more marriage proposal. Inside I’d written: “Jon, I’d propose all over again. Would you say, ‘Yes?'” I was pretty sure Jon would say “yeah,” or “yes,” or “I guess so,” just to be polite.

What I didn’t expect him to say was “yes!” with a couple of exclamation points.

That’s right. My husband of 43 years looked me in the eye and said, in so many words — in one word — he’s glad to be married to me.

More about Jon at “Would My Husband Like to Add My Name to His.”  It’s a story about Jon that will appear in the memoir-in-essays I’m putting together with my old Oakland Tribune pal, Lisa Wrenn. The book is almost ready. The next challenge is to find that publisher.