Yumans share their stories of love

Happily married and engaged couples love to share how they met and how the marriage proposal went down. These are the stories they tell their family and friends over and over again for years to come.

For Yuman Molly Blake, her husband's proposal came with a little bit of blood and pain. Molly, 38, and Peter, 40, are big outdoors people. On a beautiful clear March day, they decided to go camping at Palm Canyon.

They reached the very top and Molly was enjoying the view. She had no idea Peter had something up his sleeve. Well, she suspected, but she didn't think he would pop the question right then.

Suddenly Peter brought out a ring. “He was about to go down on one knee and I crashed into the cholla cactus. I had needles sticking in my butt and he's holding the ring. I was actually bleeding when he got down on one knee.”

She doesn't know why she didn't notice the cholla or why she fell into it.

“It's quite a view up there so I may have been distracted by that ... or perhaps by then I realized what was happening and got distracted by the ring.”

The proposal was put on pause while Peter pulled out the needles. He “wiped off the blood and then popped the question.”

Blake, a reporter at the time, met her future husband, a Marine pilot, in 1997 when she interviewed him for a story in Mississippi. She wasn't even supposed to be there. The military reporter had quit so she ended up doing the interview.

Sparks flew right away. She noted that not only is he a good-looking man, “he's a very kind man.”

Molly and Peter were married in August 2001, and they have two daughters, Helen, 7, and Leah, 5.

Colin Graham and Brittany Schultz's proposal is “a uniquely Yuma story,” he said.

Graham, 28, and Schultz, 25, met at the local Barnes and Noble a week after moving here last January.

“I wasn't really looking for anybody,” he said.

But, like it often happens, that's when he found somebody. He was standing behind her in the line and overheard her trying to explain to the clerk that as a teacher, she qualified for a discount. The clerk appeared not to understand, so he stepped in and asked what was going on.

She told him she was a special education teacher and wanted her discount. That's when he came up with the “corniest line ever,” according to Graham.

“Oh. I'm that kind of guy. Here's my card,” he told her.

Graham gave her his business card for his hot air balloon business in Yuma, and a few days later she contacted him on Facebook. He asked her out.

“We began dating here and then she followed me to Colorado for our summertime operations. She has gotten very involved in our local flight operations and has probably been up with me over 30 or 40 times now, in five different states.”

Realizing she is “the one,” Graham decided to propose to her. “I had to figure out something unique.”

He got the idea to use a business card again. So in January, he proposed at the Carla Renee restaurant using a business card with a diamond ring taped to it.

He hid the card and ring in his pocket until the time was right. Then he slipped the business card upside down on the table.

“She's used to me giving her business cards all the time,” so initially she didn't think it unusual. Until she turned it over and saw the ring. Then she started laughing.

“It took her about a minute to look up at me,” Graham said.

That's when he asked, “Will you marry me?”

She said yes.

Ralph Buruato, 48, described himself as being a “bitter” man who cared little about holidays and special occasions. He had been in the Marine Corps for eight years, with two tours overseas.

That changed when he returned to Yuma in 1988 and met the love of his life, Claudia, 42. Being around his wife has transformed him from a “bitter” man to someone who enjoys romance and holidays.

They met playing softball. “I saw her and I got myself on the team,” he confessed.

Claudia, however, played a little hard to get. “She thought I was too old and wasn't interested, but my outgoing personality won her over,” he joked.

They dated casually for a couple of weeks and then they became serious. “After that, we were inseparable. It was ‘me and you against the world.'”

Ralph proposed on Nov. 19, 1990, shortly after he left the military. “I ended up convincing her,” he said, laughing again.

He proposed in a “simple way.” “It was just me and her one night, in her little GEO Storm, parked outside my apartment. It wasn't extravagant. It was simple.”

He didn't have a ring. “I do everything on a whim.” She still said yes.

They celebrate two wedding dates because of an error on the marriage certificate. “I say June 7, 1991, she says June 6, 1991. It's fun bringing it up.”

They sometimes celebrate both dates, but for Buruato, “every day is a celebration. She's made me a romantic.”

He often posts romantic messages to his wife on Facebook, such as this one: “Babe, you have saved me from being a bitter person to one that looks forward to seeing you every day, because you make me feel so alive and happy inside!”

Although Claudia says she's not a “touchy-feely expressive” person, she admits to “loving this man with all of my heart. I would cease to function without him.

“He is so thoughtful and the best husband and father we could have been blessed with. You don't know how special he makes me feel. To have a man who wholeheartedly ... love(s) me even though we have both changed throughout the years, I don't express enough to him how much he really means to me and how he completes me.”

Ralph and Claudia have now been married for 20 years. They have three kids: a 20-year-old daughter, a 17-year-old boy and a 4-year-old boy.

Mara Knaub can be reached at mknaub@yumasun.com or 539-6856. Find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/YSMaraKnaub or on Twitter at @YSMaraKnaub.