Proposal — Drake Martinet

Proposal

In January of 2012, I was alone at home and very probably missing my longtime girlfriend who was away taking in the insanity and glamour of the WEF in Davos.

Months earlier, I’d bought a Ring, and with it burning the proverbial hole in my pocket, I used her absence to figure out how I would propose.

So alone in my apartment with a whiteboard marker and a glass shower door, I decided I would work out the odds of meeting the love of my life, in the hopes that it led me to something fun. Though I didn’t know it at the time, it was similar in spirit to another Drake Equation…but mine was about finding love, which I guess IS life.

After I did my “math” I enlisted the help of friend and designer Louis Dorman, and we translated my work into something presentable. I proposed in San Francisco, at a fantastic french restaurant that’s no longer there, on Feb. 13th. I’d saved the cork from the bottle of champagne we shared on our first date, Dec.31, 2011—which I carved out to be a ring box.

She said yes, which was the whole story for me.

As an afterthought, I’d arranged to have the Infographic Louis and I had made to be posted at AllThings D (where I worked), and on Mashable (where she worked) the following morning—assuming she would have answered YES. The whole plan was to have it publish and show her when we woke up—just a fun way to share out news with our friends and colleagues, who were a pretty overlapped venn diagram.

Instead, we were awaked before the sun came up to our phones vibrating off our nightstands as The Proposal traveled halfway around the world before we could get our pants on.

What sticks out most in my memories of the following day of viral tsunami, was just how universally positive the reaction was. The internet was a damn cynical place—even in those days. But as dozens of articles, thousands of comments, and millions of eyeballs careened our way over the next 48 hours, not a single person was negative about it. Not one.

Maybe the honesty and purity of my intent came across. I dont know. But for a whole day, the internet was nice, and sharing our joy with everyone made a fun memory for Stacy and I—to have started our life together by making a little indelible dent in culture. With our love.