Get the tissues out for this one. U.S. Paralympic track star Jarryd Wallace has his hands full training for the Paralympics in September, but he wasn’t too busy to plan and execute a gorgeous proposal for his love, Lea Babcock.
“On our second date, I asked her, ‘What’s one thing you wish you had as a child that you never got to have?’ And she said a treehouse,” the four-time world record holder tells Us Weekly.
So when he was ready to propose — just shy of two years into their relationship — he knew exactly what to do.
“In Athens, Georgia where she went to school and where I’m from, I found a family that had a beautiful treehouse in their yard, and I went and knocked on their door and asked if I could clean up their tree house and decorate it and propose to my fiancée in it,” Wallace explains.
After decorating the treehouse and setting up GoPro cameras to capture the big moment, Wallace proposed and then serenaded Babcock with a song he had written for her.
And if that wasn’t epic enough, he also surprised her with an immediate engagement party with 90 of her friends from all over the country!
The couple has already set a date — October 8, 2016 — shortly after the Paralympics, which for the first time ever are getting 66 hours of live coverage in the U.S. on NBC.
“That’s probably actually the biggest event of next year,” the single amputee, who lost his leg in 2010, admits of the wedding. “It’s interesting, we’ve got the Paralympics, but for me that’s a moment in life, and marriage is forever. So that’s the bigger moment for me this year.”
To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, visit TeamUsa.org. The Olympics begin on August 5, 2016, on NBC’s networks. The Paralympics begin on September 7, 2016.
