Jake Keyel and Zibby Greenebaum have been dating on and off since middle school. This past Valentine’s Day, they came to the Chicago StoryCorps booth and Keyel surprised Greenebaum by asking her to marry him. It’s the first wedding proposal to take place in the Chicago StoryCorps booth in the Cultural Center.

Greenebaum and Keyel are both quiet people. They first encountered each other online and there was a long period when they would write to each other on the Internet, meet in person, say almost nothing and then go home and talk more on the Internet. “I think I was just excited that there was a girl who I was talking to,” Keyel says.

In the StoryCorps booth, they talked about their first date (his mom drove them to see “Meet the Parents”) and the first song they slow-danced to in high school (“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith). They reminisce about going to Michigan with her family for the first time, staying up late and swimming. It was after that trip that he realized that he loved her.

Greenebaum says she was “stunned” by the proposal. “You’re going to be really disappointed by what I got you for Valentine’s Day,” Greenebaum says. “Was this under our $5 limit?”