Wow, talk about a swoon worthy moment! 

Do you remember hearing about the Marine who proposed to his girlfriend during the filming of an episode of One Tree Hill?  That all started with the Marine reaching out to our offices where he was sent to me.  I’d never had someone ask to get engaged on set or with a cast member involved, but it sounded like fun, so I decided to see if I could make it happen for them.  Many of you know that Hilarie Burton has a big place in her heart for our U.S. Military Personnel, so I went to her first.  She was IN!  Then we went to my boss, Greg Prange, and started to discuss how we could make it work in our filming schedule without slowing things down too much.  Television filming is fast paced work, and as they say, “time is money.”  Lucky for us, he thought it was a neat idea, so we set about finding the perfect way to pull it off.

In an upcoming episode (#622) Skills was taking Lauren on a first date, and Chuck tags along to the arcade.  The scene required background “extras”, and we scheduled the Marine and his girlfriend and two of their friends to be extras that day.  James Lafferty was directing the episode, so we knew he would be there, and Hilarie came by on her day off to be a part of the festivities.  In the scene where Skills, Lauren and Chuck sit down to have something to eat in a booth, we placed our four special extras in the booth just behind Chuck.  We rehearsed the scene and all was normal and then just before James called “Action”, Hilarie popped out of hiding with the engagement ring in hand and stopped filming to reveal that we had very special guests on set, and one of them had a question to ask.  The marine slipped out of his seat and got down on one knee in front of his girlfriend and proposed!  She said YES…through lots of tears and smiles.

What a fun day on set!