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This morning, after I rocked my math midterm, I got some breakfast at the Medici bakery on 57th Street. Sitting beside me were two cute elderly couples. Eavesdropping on their conversation, I learned one man was a retired law school professor. His wife started telling the other couple the story of their engagement, probably 40 years ago. The professor had a thick eastern European accent, making his interjections all the more dramatic and quaint.

“We were on a holiday visiting my family in New York City,” the wife began. “We’d been dating for a few years, and my family liked him a lot. My family was wondering when he was going to propose. In New York, he kept taking me to fancy restaurants, and when I thought he was going to propose, he didn’t say anything.”
“I was trying to propose.”
“But he just couldn’t get the words out.”
“I couldn’t say the words.”
“Finally on the third try…”
“It took me three tries.”
“…On the third try he proposes to me.”
“Oy.”
“He didn’t know it, but it was the same restaurant where my father proposed to my mother 30 years earlier.”
“The same restaurant.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was the most touching story I’ve heard in a long time. The whole thing made me verklempt. It was something straight out of When Harry Met Sally.

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