How I Met Your Mother - The Proposal

I was going to save this story for another month but I'll just have to send a reminder email when the show actually airs.

My friends Jana and Tim recently got engaged on the set of "How I Met Your Mother". It's one of their favorite shows and since Tim knows everyone, he had an "in" at the show that helped him arrange everything.

Since I happen to be the worst storyteller in the world (too many details to keep track of) I thought I'd leave it to the experts. Here is an exerpt from one of the star's blogs.

Something amazingly cool happened. We had an actual marriage proposal on the set of How I Met Your Mother. I just e-mailed Matt Kuhn to get the details 'cause he's the one who set the whole thing up. Matt is a writer's assistant and one of the masterminds behind Barney's Blog. He also wrote the episode "Columns" this year. Rather than condense, I'm just gonna reprint part of Matt's e-mail. (I'm sure he won't mind. And direct quotes seem to be the theme of this blog.):

"The couple was Tim [Russo] and Jana [Rugan]. They live in Brooklyn. I'm friends with Tim's brother. He called me up and said his brother and his girlfriend were huge fans of the show and wanted to know if they could visit the set, etc. I said, 'Sure.' Then he asked if Tim could propose to Jana on the set. I went to [cocreators] Carter [Bays] and Craig [Thomas] to see if they were cool with it, and then we all realized we could actually work them into the finale. (They're such romantics.... And by 'they,' I mean Carter.)"

Here's the gist (and this is me, Josh, by the way, not Matt): In a rare romantic gesture (I kid), Ted takes Robin out to dinner for their one-year anniversary at the same restaurant where they had their first date, the place where Ted stole the blue French horn for Robin in the pilot. Two glasses of champagne are delivered to the table and at the bottom of Robin's glass is an engagement ring. Well, it turns out the champagne (and ring) were supposed to go to another table where a guy really was intending to propose to his girlfriend. (Was that a terrible sentence? I'm having trouble writing.) Anyway, so we shot a bunch of takes of this scene. Tim and Jana were extras in the restaurant, and everyone on set knew there was this couple who were about to really get engaged. (Everyone except Jana, of course, who's just trying not to make any noise as an extra.) So Pam Fryman, our unbelievably great director, calls "second pass," which was the code, but I was totally confused about what we were supposed to do and actually got scared I was going to ruin the whole thing. Anyway, our prop guys stealthily switched out the prop ring with the actual engagement ring, and we started the scene. At the moment when the other guy was supposed to stand up and announce the ring was his (as he'd done the previous eight or nine takes) Tim stood up and said, "It's mine." He came over to us, retrieved the ring, walked back to the table, got down on bended knee, and said, "Jana, will you marry me?" (Spoiler alert) She said, "Yes." She was sobbing. Actually, pretty much everyone started to cry. Not me, though. I'm tough. Well, maybe I got a little misty. But Stage 22 is pretty dusty, and as I'd mentioned in Blog #1, I have allergies. Damn dust.

It's SUCH a cute story and may even air in the season finale airing May 14th. Regardless, they'll be in the background.

Congratulations to the happy couple!