Sports reporter Ross Karl knew he had to be sneaky if he wanted to keep his proposal plans a surprise from his partner, fellow journalist Janika ter Ellen.
"Janika's very good at being a journalist," Karl said in this week's edition of New Idea.
"If I put a tiny idea out there she wants to know everything about it."
Ter Ellen, who presents Prime News and used to be Paul Henry's sidekick on The Paul Henry Show, had mentioned her love of bushwalking near her grandmother's Kawerau home, so Karl bided his time for more than a year, waiting for the pair to make their way out there, naturally.
Karl and ter Ellen set out on an evening bushwalk to a spot overlooking a waterfall, and as she started to tell him about the history of the place, he got down on one knee.
"I thought he'd fallen over," ter Ellen said.
"He was crying and it didn't seem like a happy cry. All the worst case scenarios were going through my head. Then he said 'no, no, no, it's just ... you are the light of my life and I had a speech but I've forgotten it. Will you marry me'," she recalled.
Karl conceded he was "a little shaky and a little teary" when it came to popping the question.
The pair fell in love during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, when they were working in the same newsroom in Wellington.
"What was more important to you then," Janika asked Karl, "me or the World Cup?"
"Well, I'm not marrying Richie McCaw, let's put it that way," Karl replied.
Karl and ter Ellen plan to marry in April next year on the Coromandel Peninsula.
- nzherald.co.nz