An Alabama couple recently became engaged on a school bus that was specially rented for the occasion to mark the couple’s journey since first meeting in middle school 30 years ago, reports Inside Edition.
Ernie Caldwell long-held a flame for Tracie Self ever since first seeing her on the school bus, but he never had the courage to ask her out.
“I just happened to look up on the bus one day and saw her get on and that was it,” Cardwell told InsideEdition.com. “I was immediately taken. I kept it to myself. Two or three years went by and then we ended up in the same journalism class, but I was still thinking, ‘No, not gonna happen.'”
They both eventually married other people, had children and then divorced before reconnecting on Facebook. They started dating, and now they are planning to get married next June.
Caldwell said he wanted to find the original school bus they rode, but that was an impossible task. So he rented a school bus and on it affixed their original bus number, 1738. He brought her onboard, got on one knee and popped the question.
“I thought of a lot of different ways to propose but nothing felt right, so I thought about taking it full circle,” Cardwell said.
