The engagement of Dana Riley and Brittany Schutzman was a simple event, but nonetheless romantic. On the cold evening of March 22nd, 2014, Dana proposed by a bench in Downtown Covington.
Mutual friends set up Dana and Brittany in 2012. After their first date, Brittany waited patiently for a second. “I was a slow mover,” Dana says.
Eventually, Dana and Brittany had their second date. Dana took this opportunity to show Brittany around his hometown of Covington, and the two struck up a long conversation. They made their way to a bench on Riverfront Road, a bench that would later become their engagement spot. The two talked until 3 a.m. despite the fact that Brittany had to work in the early morning.
They soon became inseparable, seeing each other daily. Soon, Dana and Brittany’s two-year anniversary approached. “I had suspicions a ring was coming,” Brittany says. However, their anniversary came and went and a ring did not appear.
One evening after dinner with Brittany’s aunt, Dana began to drive through Covington to their bench, a place the couple frequented for long discussions.
“I should have been thrown off by the fact that it was 30 degrees out and we were just sitting there talking, but I wasn’t,” Brittany says. “Dana started talking about the past two years. I told him he was stuck with me.”
That moment is when Dana got down on one knee, looked at Brittany, and asked her if she would be stuck with him forever.
After a recent surgery on Brittany’s benign brain tumor, the couple is more ready than ever to start their lives together. They will be wed at St. Joseph’s in Cold Spring July 11, 2015.