US man paints marriage proposal on billboard

New York, August 1 (ANI): A Brooklyn man risked his life to scale an empty billboard to write a marriage proposal for his girlfriend.

Drew Henkels painted the message on the hoarding overlooking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

"I never felt like this in my life. I wanted to make sure she knew I was serious," the New York Daily News quoted Henkels as saying.

The message which he painted in June - "Will u marry me Chelsea Mose?" - still looms over the unromantic expressway near the Flushing Avenue exit.

28-year-old Henkels met his sweetheart a year ago in Perth in her native Australia, where he was on tour playing in a band.

The couple exchanged old-fashioned letters for four months before she came to visit him in November, and after she moved into his Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment in April, he decided to marry her

"I was mulling over a couple of proposal scenarios. None really felt worthy, so when this idea struck me I couldn't let it go," he said.

He made several failed attempts to scale a different hoarding before settling on the one he tagged.

"If you fall, it's two broken bones at best, more likely a spinal injury. There's nothing romantic about taking care of someone in a wheelchair," he said.

All the same, on June 6, he threw a rope through the bottom rung of the ladder that hangs off the billboard which was 50 feet off the ground, hauled himself up and wrote his high-profile proposal in blue paint.

"Looking down, feeling dizzy and holding a long, heavy paint roller over my head, I felt I could fall at any minute," he said.

He drew courage as drivers stuck in traffic on the expressway began to honk and cheer.

When Mose got home from work, he walked her over to see his handiwork.

"I went down on one knee and I pulled out the ring and pointed up," Henkels said.

He was met with silence, and his heart sank.

"I wanted to make the most of it and savor the moment," Mose said.

But she quickly relented. "I could see the anxiety in his eyes. So I said, 'Yes!' - really fast and really loud." (ANI)