Leave it to a Hobokenite to propose with the fishes.  Brian Bradley, 30, surprised 29-year-old girlfriend Courtney Gambardella with a very special proposal on their trip to Boston this weekend.  Bradley and Gambardella, who have been together for a year and a half, were walking through the aquarium and stopped at window 15 of the Giant Ocean Tank, looking at the fish. While Gambardella was ready to move on, Bradley wanted to linger.  When a diver appeared at the window, Gambardella still had no idea. Then, the diver swam to the window and held up a sign that read: "Courtney will you marry me…

If the Rotary Club of Hoboken never performed another good deed, it could retire knowing that in addition to serving the community, it helped two members fall in love. Rotarians and recently engaged couple Ryan Mitchell, 34, and Laura Brayton, 33, met during a club meeting in January of 2009. “I was involved in a business that required a lot of networking,” Mitchell said. “That's why I decided to attend a Rotary meeting." “I was president of the club at the time,” Brayton added. “He came to the meeting... uninvited.” Brayton introduced herself and welcomed Mitchell. “We shook hands,” she said…

In January of 2008 Seth Joseph was a comedian from Oklahoma who was looking to build his career by moving either to Los Angeles or New York. He was also looking to expand his dating pool. “I had gone through every dateable person in Oklahoma,” he said. So Joseph created a profile on the dating site OkCupid, and expanded the search field to the maximum range of miles. He stumbled upon the profile of Abby Wentworth, a New Jersey native who had just settled into a new role with the Teach for America headquarters in Manhattan. Wentworth was a little surprised at seeing a message from someone …

When Ron Reed wanted to ask his girlfriend of two and a half years, Dominique Picinich, to marry him, he wanted to make sure it was a moment she would never forget. Instead of hiring a horse-drawn carriage, decked out in a tux and setting the scene at sunset, the Denville resident was got down on one knee dressed casually in a t-shirt and shorts onstage during Cloud Cult's set at Maxwell's on Tuesday night. "She know the engagement was coming because she picked the ring out," Reed, 28, told Patch shortly after the show. "She knew it was going to happen. So it needed to be a big surprise." As …

Dan Moran and his fiance Meghan Robinson met as members of the Hoboken Harriers running club. Moran, 30, had just recently joined when he was asked to welcome Robinson, 31, on her first run with the group. After spending the summer months of 2009 building a casual friendship during group runs alongside other Harriers, the couple spent their first moments alone while training for the same marathon, on a route that took them across the George Washington Bridge. “It was just the two of us,” Moran recalls. “I think that was our first date.” They got engaged a year later in November of 2010. That …

Adam Slavin had been a regular patron at the Dubliner where he got to know one of the bartenders, Lindsay Reddington, pretty well. So well in fact, that they're getting married this November. Slavin, 38, and Reddington, 32, built a friendship at the bar and saw that friendship organically grow into a relationship over three years ago. Reddington says she had a feeling Slavin was interested. “He showed up a lot more,” she says. “I pursued her pretty hard,” he says. "Maybe it was my ability to make good drinks," she says. The attraction was mutual. The pair moved in together a year later, and …

Craig Andrews had just returned from vacationing in Las Vegas and was sitting in McSwiggan's giving an interview about his job at Mulligan's for a best bartender contest. He was not expecting to meet anyone that night, let alone his future wife. “I wasn't really switched on,” he said. “I was probably still hungover.” Meanwhile, Craig's future wife Nancy came to the bar that night with a girlfriend and two guys. But Nancy didn't find either of the guys interesting, so she turned to Craig, seated next to her at the bar. Craig didn't seem too motivated to talk to this woman he didn't know. “I …

Janine Loffredo and her fiance Tommy O'Melia are getting married next March. But they almost never even got together for a first date. Janine, 29, tends bar at the Village Pourhouse, formerly O'Donoghue's. Tommy, 28, is a bartender at nearby Mulligan's. Four years ago a mutual friend brought Tommy to the O'Donoghue's Christmas party and introduced him to Janine. The friend thought the two would click. Indeed, Tommy was interested, but Janine was reluctant. “Being set-up just seemed a little forced,” Janine said. But after a few weeks of encountering each other again and again with their bars …

Hoboken couple Rachel Singer, 28, and Scott Davidovic, 28, have been together for more than ten years. It's kind of like that scene in the Sex and the City movie, when Carrie finally gets engaged to "Mr. Big" after being together for ten years, Singer joked recently, still happy and smiling about her recent engagement. Two weeks ago, Davidovic, a real estate broker in town, popped the question. "It was long overdue," he said. Davidovic had decorated the couple's apartment with yellow daisies. "I started crying when I walked in," Singer said. And then and there, down on one knee, next to his …