Oak Harbor man pops the question on the big screen

Published 1:30 am Monday, August 8, 2016

By Ron Newberry

Whidbey News-Times Staff Reporter

OAK HARBOR — Amanda Simpson, 20, can barely remember anything about the double feature at the Blue Fox Drive-In on a Friday night in late July.

“Ice Age”? “Jason Bourne”? It’s all a blur.

Simpson was too busy coming down from the excitement of a wedding proposal that appeared on the outdoor theater’s big screen.

Mat Sypert, 21, wanted a unique way to ask his Oak Harbor High School sweetheart to marry him. Ashley Lewis, Simpson’s sister, came up with the idea of the drive-in.

Sypert, Lewis and her mom Rhonda Simpson were in on it, working with the Blue Fox.

Just before the start of the first movie, Sypert excused himself to use the restroom. A message appeared on the screen: “For someone special here tonight … ”

Lewis was sitting next to her sister in the front seat of the car.

“She had no idea,” Lewis said. “She was like, ‘Oh, somebody’s getting a special message!”

Even when Simpson’s favorite song, “A Thousand Years,” started playing, she still hadn’t put it together. She rolled down the window to tell her parents in the adjacent car about how much she loved that song.

When photos of Sypert and her showed up on the screen, the tears started flowing.

Sypert arrived at the side of the car just as the most telling messages appeared: “I have something very important to ask to the person I love most in the world.”

Then: “Amanda I love you. Will you marry me? Mat.”

From one knee, a bouquet of flowers in hand, Sypert asked the question aloud.

By then, both sets of parents had appeared and the drive-in was a chorus of honking horns.

“She was in hysterics crying,” Lewis said.

Sypert repeated the question.

He got the answer he had hoped for.