How I met my Partner: Sweetest engagement with a Haribo ring

CJ DEBARRA, an author from Clonakilty, and Lyndsey Stoodley from Cardiff, Wales, met in Nottingham, England, and despite a “slightly disastrous” first date, will be getting married this summer.

CJ told The Echo: “We were just coming out of lockdown and I had been trying to do the dating thing again, so I went back on Tinder, saying ‘if it doesn’t work this time, that’s it, I’m not doing it again’.”

The pair matched on the app, and “we had a slightly disastrous first date in that we went for a few drinks, and towards the end of our date I was coming out of a pub and I slipped, went down on my ankle and passed out from the pain,” CJ said, adding that Lyndsey helped them to get home.

“In the morning, I woke up and was absolutely mortified — I thought I’m never going to see this person again, but then I realised how bad my ankle was, and the only person that I could get through to that morning was Lyndsey, so they took me to the walk-in centre to get my ankle looked at.

“I thought, after that experience, let’s go for another drink and see how we get on, and it went much better the second time.”

That was two-and-a-half years ago, and they have been together ever since, with Lyndsey moving in with CJ about a year ago and forming a great relationship with cat Meeley.

CJ said they decided to propose because “we had started talking about the future, buying a house together, and I thought it’s the right person and the right time, it feels like it’s meant to be”.

They continued: “For me, I hadn’t ever really considered whether I’d want to get married, then when marriage equality happened in 2015, I had been campaigning for it so it meant a lot to me to have the proposal be in Ireland.”

Lyndsey had the same idea, explaining: “We had been talking a lot about future stuff, so I took a ring over to Ireland — I knew that would be important to CJ to have it happen there.

“I was going to suss it out a little, see how things were going, but then they beat me to it, the first morning of the holidays, straight to the beach, job done — I had left the ring in the car because I was thinking ‘I can’t do it on the first beach, I gotta find the nicest beach’.

“CJ proposed to me, I panicked a little because I did think it would be me that asked the question, so I was like ‘we gotta go to the car’ and dragged them through the sand dunes, I forgot to say yes or no, so I ran then yelled back ‘it’s a yes by the way’.”

CJ reminded Lyndsey: “You kept asking very not subtle questions like how did I feel about diamonds and what was my favourite place in West Cork, but I never thought you’d do it on this visit.”

They added: “I chose a beach near where I grew up, I spent a lot of time there as a child and teenager — the minute I knelt down, they knew what was happening and took off running, so we both proposed, we grabbed the ring then went back to the beach — it was a very us occasion.”

Lyndsey said: “Neither of us realised how bizarre it was that it happened in that way, but it was never going to be conventional.”

CJ added that Lyndsey doesn’t normally wear rings so it was a struggle to find one so they used a Haribo ring, but Lyndsey found a pebble on the beach that they are having made into an engagement ring by a local jeweller.

Lyndsey explained: “We are going to get married sooner rather than later,” saying that they are planning to do something small in West Cork this summer, that her brother is a musician and writing them a song, and the couple have a mutual friend who’s a celebrant”.

CJ said: “Nothing about us is conventional which is kind of fun.

“So we’ll do something completely and utterly unique to us.”