A proposal fuelled by star power
Kevin Pillar helped man pop the question,
The Jays may have lost Thursday, but Darryl Stawychny and Katie Bookman won, with a little help from outfielder Kevin Pillar.
Stawychny had picked Thursday to propose to Bookman and, on the day before, was having breakfast at a spot near the Rogers Centre when Bookman’s favourite player just happened to be there.
“I went up and asked him, ‘Hey, do you mind if you just hold this sign for me?’ ” Stawychny said.
Soon Stawychny had a photo of him and Pillar holding a placemat bearing the hastily scrawled message “Katie, will you marry this guy?” with an arrow pointing to Stawychny. A day and a quick picture-framing later, there he was in the middle of Blue Jays Way. He dropped on one knee before the game.
“All of a sudden he stopped. He opens his backpack and pulls out this frame, and Kevin Pillar is holding this, like, napkin,” Bookman said, describing the proposal. “And I started crying.”
She said yes and the two couldn’t pay attention to the first half of the playoff game versus the Texas Rangers, as they alerted friends and family and soaked in what just happened.
“I feel like if we’d paid more attention to the game, maybe they would have won,” the groom-to-be said afterward.
When he bumped into Pillar, Stawychny had been scouting out proposal locations with his friend Derek Lang, who photographed the question-popping from a discreet nearby perch, paparazzo-style.
Stawychny kept it short — he said he didn’t want to bug a Jays player during the playoffs, but this was special.
“It could have been any other player,” Bookman said. “It is crazy that it unfolded the way it did.”
Pillar could not immediately be reached by the Star Thursday evening. “For him, it was quick, it took two seconds, but that’s something we’ll remember for the rest of our lives,” he said.
Both Bookman, a teacher, and Stawychny, who works on movie sets, said one of the reasons the two connected is over their love of sports — especially the Jays.
Stawychny, whose father died four years ago, said one of his first memories is running around outside the stadium before going to a game with his dad. He’d stuck an old photo of his father — a big Jays fan — in the frame, behind the photo of himself and Pillar, which Bookman said was “very special.”
She and Stawychny met shortly after his father died of cancer. They met on Ok Cupid — and Bookman says it was love after their first date at Mugshots, for her.
“The sparks started flying as soon as we met because there’s was lots of talk of sports, which we’re both super into,” Bookman said, adding that their second date was a Maple Leafs game.
The proposal was unexpected, she said.
A co-worker had brought up marriage last week, but Bookman thought that if Stawychny were to propose, he’d do it on New Year’s Eve — both his parents’ birthday. When asked when the wedding would be, Stawychny said: “I just proposed a couple hours ago! That would be crazy to talk about the wedding already.”