Many women have been surprised by a marriage proposal, but Marquita Arguello is the first woman toStumbleUpon one.
Arguello, a 23-year-old dental hygiene student, and her boyfriend, Tyrel Hartman, don’t own a television, so they often Stumble through the web together for entertainment. While killing time before a date last Friday, the recommendation engine became more personalized than expected when Arguello stumbled upon a photo of Hartman.
Scrolling down the page, she read signs that he was holding in each of 11 photos. Together the signs said:
“To my best friend … Whom I love, you are so amazing, and so smart, even more beautiful. So on this day, I want to ask you: Will you marry me?”
StumbleUpon might “take you to great stuff based on your interests,” but its algorithms are still unlikely to pinpoint the Tumblr blog that your boyfriend created. Needless to say, there was some scheming involved.
Hartman, 26, had the idea for the proposal in August. In what he assumed was a long shot, he sent an email to the StumbleUpon Support Team: “I’m exploring ways to propose to my beautiful girlfriend and I think I have finally thought of something worth while,” he wrote.
StumbleUpon surprised him by agreeing to rig his girlfriend’s account so that it would recommend his proposal site at an exact time. Hartman picked pages that he wanted Arguello to find leading up to the proposal, like a series of zombie wedding photos, a video of a dog saying “I love you” and a graphic with the words “Say yes!”
Technical difficulties delayed the proposal for about half an hour, but Hartman — nervously checking his phone — managed to keep them both Stumbling until it finally showed up. Arguello accepted, and they’ve since spent a lot of time explaining the elaborate setup.
“We live in Wyoming, and nobody knows what StumbleUpon is,” Hartman says. “The first thing we did was post it on Facebook so that we wouldn’t have to sit there for 20 minutes and explain what it was.”
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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