Engaging romance: Oak Harbor man pops the question on the big screen

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

Amanda Simpson can barely remember anything about the double feature at the Blue Fox Drive-In last Friday night.

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

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

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

Sypert, Lewis and her mom Rhonda Simpson were in on it together, working with the Blue Fox to orchestrate an unforgetable event.

Just before the start of the first movie, Sypert excused himself to use the restroom and a message appeared on the screen.

“For someone special here tonight … ” read the message.

“She had no idea,” said Lewis, who was sitting next to her sister in the front seat of the car.

“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 all together. She rolled down the car window to tell her parents in the adjacent car about how much she loved that song.

When photos of Sypert and her started showing up on the screen, then 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,” read one.

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 horns honking.

“She was in hysterics crying,” Lewis said of her younger sister.


She was crying so hard that she initially didn’t respond, forcing Sypert to repeat the question.

“I didn’t realize that I didn’t give him an answer,” Simpson said.

Sypert, 21, got the answer he had hoped for.

“I thought it went fairly smoothly,” he said. “I was a little nervous.”

The couple hasn’t set a wedding date but are pointing to the summer of 2018 after Simpson, 20, earns her bachelor’s degree.

Of course, in this era of social media, that fact was old news by the end of the evening.

While both movies played out, Simpson updated her relationship status then spent much of the night responding to comments from friends.

The Blue Fox Drive-In also posted a video of the wedding proposal that appeared on its screen on its Facebook page. The video has received more than 7,800 views.

“I don’t really remember anything from either of the movies,” Simpson said.

But she’ll never forget the evening.

“It was a real surprise,” she said.