Local news station accidentally films proposal at Wrigley Field: 'Big news you guys!'
Clinton Parkinson had planned to take his Chicago-native girlfriend Clohe Ludwig to the front of Wrigley Field to propose to her. While he anticipated the moment would be cause for celebration, he never expected it to make local news headlines.
During a blizzard, a WGN camera crew set off to Wrigley Field to talk to baseball fans about the April 14 afternoon game that was cancelled due to weather. But, instead of capturing disappointed reactions from Cubs fans at the ballpark, the camera man happened to capture Parkinson kneeling before Ludwig with a ring in hand.
WGN reporter Andrea Darlas went to interview Ludwing and Parkinson after serendipitously filming the couple’s engagement near the entrance of Wrigley Field. While Ludwig, 26, had previously lived in the Chicago area, she moved to Denver two years ago where she met the 32-year-old California native. The pair have been dating since mid-November. “I met this guy recently, but apparently I’m spending the rest of my life with him,” she told WGN.
Parkinson had planned to propose to her at the Cubs game with the hopes of getting on the jumbotron, so when the game was cancelled Parkinson had to improvise. “We ended up going to the field anyway because she is a huge Cubs fan and it's always been a dream of mine to see a game there,” Parkinson tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
While on a trip to Midwest metropolis, Ludwig had suspected her boyfriend would be proposing at some point, especially when family members accompanied the couple on their trip to the stadium.
"I had an inkling that it was going to be this weekend, I didn't know when," Ludwig said. Parkinson, on the other hand, knew that his girlfriend knew about his plans to propose to her when he noticed something different about her. “I figured out that she knew when I saw that she got her nails done, and she never gets her nails done," he said.
The couple and her family saw three older baseball fans struggling to take a selfie in front of the famous marquee when Parkinson offered to take their photo if they would, in turn, take one for him. As Ludwig and Parkinson posed for their own photo in front of the Wrigley entrance, Parkinson surprised his girlfriend by getting down on one knee. “I then took the ring out of my pocket that I had been hiding all weekend and proposed to her to the surprise of the folks taking our photo,” Parkinson tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
Lucky for Parkinson— and the local news crew— Ludwig said yes when Parkinson popped the question. “I said yes— actually I think I said, ‘You have to put the ring on me,’” Ludwig told the outlet. “But the answer was yes.”
“We got it done,” Parkinson confirmed. Parkinson later broke the news of their engagement and the happy coincidence with the WGN camera crew on his Facebook page. “Big news you guys!”
“It's just so special to have this happen, and I'm able to brag about the first time I came to Chicago, we made the news,” Parkinson says, adding that he enjoys the attention more than she does. The pair plan to get married in September of this year.
While the couple wasn’t too pleased that they missed the opportunity to watch the game, WGN said that “any game that may have been played on the diamond was nothing compared to the one now on Ludwig's finger.”
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