21 years ago today, I received my first marriage proposal

I was only 18 years old, and this was my first date with the guy!

We were set up by a mutual friend. I'd met him only once or twice before this date.

He sent me flowers at work - three white roses and three purple ones.

We went out to eat at a restaurant in St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis. It was a nice evening - we enjoyed a good dinner and some small talk. He was nice enough, but I didn't feel any of that fabled chemistry.

At dessert, he reached across the table, put his hand over mine, and asked me to marry him.

I laughed, thinking it was a joke. "You don't have to pretend to propose just because it's Valentine's Day," I said.

"I'm not pretending."

He was deadly serious. He asked me again, explaining that he thought it was time he settled down, and how he had felt "love at first sight."

I said that I wasn't ready for anything like marriage and besides, we barely knew each other!

"I know all I need to know," he said.

The rest of the evening is kind of a blur. I turned him down, of course. I found the proposal odd and unsettling and the whole situation weird. I don't remember the ride home or what he said then. I never saw him again. Our mutual friend told me I had "broken his heart." I still had a hard time taking that seriously.

I didn't receive another marriage proposal (at least, not a serious one) for twelve more years. That one, I accepted.

Some people are way too intense for my tastes - I remember one night I was being harassed by a guy in a bar. I was only about 19 at the time and I saw a friend of my brothers come in so I went to him and asked him to pretend to be my date. Just to get rid of this guy which I told him.

Within five minutes, he was getting gooshy. By the end of the night, he was asking me to marry him. The following day when I saw him again and he was sober, he was STILL insisting he loved me! I told him he was a nice guy but etc... He followed me out into the street and I left him there yelling after me, "How's it feel to have broken my heart!?"

Creepy, man. That's how it felt. He still gives me puppy eyes to this day (25 years or so later).

was very romantic... spent the weekend at a nice hotel, and the waiter brought us room-service champagne with my ring in the glass.