The timing was perfect for Doug Ogilvie, an openly gay diver at Western Illinois University. In Nov. 2013, Illinois legalized same-sex marriage. Three months later, on Valentine's Day 2014, Ogilvie said yes to a marriage proposal from his boyfriend Eric Fashimpaur.
After they ate breakfast, he handed Ogilvie a handmade Valentine's Day card with cutouts of clouds, planes and hearts connected by a string. The card read, "I love you. Will you marry me?"
As Ogilvie read the card, Fashimpaur got on one knee. Ogilvie pulled the ring out of the envelope, and the soft-spoken Fashimpaur repeated the final four words on the card. Ogilvie said, "Yes," as he put the ring-made of tungsten with a shiny blue and black band down the middle-on his left ring finger.
"It was just a happy day," Ogilvie said.
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This boy-meets-boy-and-falls-in-love story is told in a terrific article by Erik Hall for the Windy City Times in Chicago. The story details Ogilvie's diving career with its struggles and triumphs, but its heart is his relationship with Fashimpaur. The 21-year-old Ogilvie and the 25-year-old Fashimpaur met on the online app Scruff and had their first date in May 2013. Nine months later, Fashimpaur popped the question.
"They complement each other well," said Julia Rasmussen a fellow diver and one of Ogilvie's roommates. "Eric is very shy, inverted and quiet where Doug is your perfect definition of a social butterfly."
The whole story is worth a read and what I most enjoy about it how "normal" it is, and I use that term deliberately. We've seen similar profiles of straight athletes countless times, and with gay marriage now the norm in most states, we will see more and more involving LGBT people. It's hard not to smile when reading about two people in love.
