Alumni Life

She said Yes!

Friends, random passers-by and Internet rejoice

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Don’t get mad about the headline spoiler—the story only gets better. When UB residence hall director Frank Tierney proposed to his girlfriend, Katelyn Illingworth, on a frosty evening last December, he used an entire side of Goodyear Hall on the South Campus to pop the question, spelled out in white lights and captured on video.

The proposal quickly went viral—drawing attention from the Huffington Post and other national media—partly due to Tierney’s phenomenal attention to detail, from enlisting friends and family to darken the dorm, to rerouting campus buses away from the area outside where he dropped onto bended knee.

Your Proposal Stories:

Naturally, we had to ask our married UB alumni: How did you propose to your significant other? Here are a few of our favorite responses from social media.

Erick Szczap (BA ’05), Charlotte, N.C.

I surprised my [now] wife by proposing while studying in Lockwood Library. It doesn’t get more romantic than that.

Adam Schiffmacher (BS ’11), Buffalo, N.Y.

In the middle of nowhere in northern Ontario, I arranged for me and my now fiancée to leave our campsite and go to a local Canadian park while a friend of mine drove up from Buffalo with a few members of my fiancée’s family and some close friends. They set up 400 LED color-changing candles while I stalled for seven hours at the park. We arrived back at the campsite to find the candles set up nearby on a small beach by the lake. A lot of planning, but well worth the surprise. It was a beautiful night!

Marge Chatterjee (BS ’85), Austin, Texas

[I] wasn’t proposed to on campus, but we were married at Baird Point on a beautiful sunny day in July 1985. Still married, still love UB.