I'm a sucker for these types of stories.

When Robert Toomey called Alaska Airlines reservations last Saturday, his thoughts weren't on travel. They were on love. Toomey wanted to propose to his girlfriend, Irene, at San Francisco International Airport as he arrived the next day on Alaska Flight 685. And would the airline help?

"Well, how could we say ‘no' to such a sweet request," SFO Customer Service Supervisor Michele Harris said.

Airport matchmaking isn't easy, however, in the age of stringent airport security. But love conquered all — and San Francisco station employees arranged for a pass so Irene could get to the gate. They also changed the gate display sign to say, "Irene, I love you. Will you marry me?"

As the flight arrived, passengers got wind of what was about to happen. They joined in, waiting with the very nervous Robert as Irene made her way through security. Once she finally approached the gate, the crowd parted and Robert dropped to one knee to propose.

"The crowd went wild. The clapping and cheers were so loud that passengers were coming from surrounding gates just to see what all the commotion was about," Harris said.

And did Irene say yes? Apparently so. Amid the commotion, Robert slipped a ring on her finger.

Ha, I helped people propose on two different occasions when I was flight instructing. First guy set up pumpkins to say it, and he got a discovery flight so we could over-fly it.(He didn't realize that it'd look very small from the air, about didn't find it! HA).

The second was I had a female student, and her soon-to-be wanted to do something special. They only lived 1/2nm off the final of one of our runways. So I gave him our handheld, and when we departed for the lesson, I told him I'd give him 45-min to set-up his back-yard. As we came back in, I had her do a turn-about-a-point(their house) and she couldn't tell what the TP-lettering was, but he got on the handheld(off unicom freq) and proposed. Pretty neat, kinda weird, but I heard they already divorced(Only been 2-3yrs!)

Here you go VB, this happened this last year here in Roanoke:

http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/wb/xp-104758
Followup: http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/145210