Iowa man uses Wisconsin newspaper to propose

A Cedar Rapids man proposed to his girlfriend of two years with the help of the Door County (Wis.) Advocate.

Dan Boardman, 37, proposed to Jillian Faaborg, 26, also from Cedar Rapids, the morning of Aug. 20 using the Aug. 19 edition of the Advocate. The couple met through friends more than five years ago.

After two years of dating, Boardman was ready to take the next step. The August trip was the second time they had been to Door County.

“I was trying to think of something out of the ordinary to do,” he said. Boardman did not want to do the proposal in a restaurant.

Several months before the couple’s trip, Boardman began laying the groundwork for his surprise proposal. He called the Bay Point Inn — where the couple would be staying — to ask what newspapers would be available on Aug. 20.

Next he got in touch with Katie Vitela, advertising account executive for the Door County Advocate.

“I’ve never seen an ad like this in my eight years at the Advocate,” Vitela said. “It was so much fun.”

The two worked together to create the ad.

“He told me what he wanted it to say, so we just laid it out to look kind of just like text. Then we decided to put a couple of hearts in the corner so he could find it on the page,” she said.

The ad said in part:

Jillian,

Every day I look forward to new adventures with you. You are smart, beautiful, determined, caring, and most of all, patient enough to deal with me.

Boardman ended the ad with “I love you with all my heart.”

The couple had been talking marriage, but he kept telling Faaborg he was “not ready.”

Boardman brought the newspaper to their Bay Point Inn room under the guise of looking up things to do that day in Door County. He commented to Faaborg about the “strange” article about people with the same names.

“It took me about three lines in to kind of understand that it was about me ... I kind of went numb,” Faaborg said. “I looked over and he was on one knee.”

She was surprised.

“That’s how I got her to read it,” Boardman said. “The rest is history.”

Faaborg learned something new about her betrothed that day.

“Dan is more romantic than I thought,” she said with a laugh.

The two plan to tie the knot Nov. 5, 2016.