A Boston city building inspector dressed as an armored knight to propose
He even rode in on a white horse.
When Chris Broderick of Roslindale began researching his ancestors’ heritage in Ireland, he came across his family’s coat of arms. The coat of arms meant so much to him that he had it tattooed on his arm. And when it came time to propose to his girlfriend, he carried it with him — on a shield, atop a white horse, while dressed as a knight in shining armor.
“I think it’s so romantic,” said Broderick’s fiancee, Cindy MacDonald, of the proposal. “I think it was beautiful. It came from his heart. It gives me chills.”
Broderick, 57, a building inspector for the City of Boston, began planning back in January. He mentioned his idea for the proposal casually to a friend who happened to be an equestrian, and she said she could help him secure a white horse. That’s when the idea started to take shape, Broderick said.
Broderick and MacDonald have been dating for four years. They both grew up in Roslindale, where Broderick was friends with MacDonald’s older brothers. After losing touch for many years, they ran into each other at a mutual friend’s birthday party in 2014 and began chatting on Facebook.
“I asked him out and we met for coffee,” said MacDonald, 53, an accountant who now lives in Canton. “Then we went forward with the relationship. The first thing that attracted me to him was his integrity. When he says he’s going to be somewhere, he is somewhere. When he says he’s not going to do something, he sticks to his guns and doesn’t do it.”
“She’s just beautiful,” Broderick said of MacDonald. “But on the inside, it’s more beautiful. She is the most kind and considerate person. She goes out of her way to do nice things for people who are unfortunate.”
Cindy MacDonald and Chris Broderick in Ireland in June.
The couple bonded over their shared love of Ireland, where they’ve each traced their ancestry. The pair received their Irish citizenship this year after successfully completing the application process, MacDonald said. In June, they traveled to Ireland for two weeks, making meaningful stops at spots like the house where her grandfather was born.
Meanwhile, Broderick was secretly working on his proposal plan. He reached out to a Florida company called Shield & Crest to order a hand-painted shield with his coat of arms and reserved a white horse from Blazing Saddles Equestrian Center in Randolph, which his equestrian friend, Kim Van Horn of Woburn, helped him find. He turned to Boston Costume in Cambridge for the suit of armor.
On Saturday, Dec. 1, Blazing Saddles delivered the horse to Broderick in the parking lot of Canton High School, which is a few houses away from MacDonald’s home. Rain was in the forecast, Broderick said, but he told the center to bring the horse even if it rained because he was going through with the plan anyway.
“We had an incredible day,” Broderick said. “It was 50 degrees out. The sun was gleaming on me. I could not have planned this.”
Broderick plotted with MacDonald’s sister, Helen MacDonald of Hingham, to make sure she was home. As the siblings prepared lunch, Broderick, dressed in a full suit of armor complete with a cape and feathered helmet, approached the house.
“I heard my sister say, ‘Hey, what’s that?'” MacDonald said. “So I turned around, and I see a horse on my front lawn.”
In a video that the city’s Inspectional Services Department posted to Twitter, you can see MacDonald, with her hand over her mouth, open the front door and say, “What is this? What is this?”
“I want you to be my wife,” Broderick says to MacDonald before he dismounts.
Then he gets down on one knee (“It’s not all metal. It’s actually like a leather. It’s wasn’t bad at all,” Broderick said of kneeling in the suit) and asks for MacDonald’s hand in marriage.
The couple hasn’t set a wedding date yet, but said the shield with the coat of arms will be on display when they share a home.
https://twitter.com/ISDBoston/status/1072566743405539328
