Andrew Humphries didn’t get a name. But he had learned enough over the course of a short bus ride to guess how he could find the girl he’d met while riding Route 6, the Italian he couldn’t seem to get out of his mind.
The next day, he found himself standing at a receptionist’s desk with flowers in his hand and a note. ‘To the smile on Route 6, if you’d ever love to brush up on your Nintendo or go to dinner I’d love to take you out,’ it read.
The girl who had casually joined a debate over video games on the bus the night before had just left for vacation and wasn’t at work. But she could be reached by phone. On a layover, she learned of her admirer’s bold move.
“I was shocked,” Sofia Farone said, remembering the phone call this week. “I’d thought of him as a ‘single-serving friend,’ like someone on a plane you never meet again.”
Still, she was intrigued enough to take a chance. The pair met after her return to Minneapolis and quickly picked up where they’d left off.
Four years after their chance February encounter, Humphries coaxed Farone back aboard the Route 6 bus where it all began. It was her birthday. She wanted to stay in but he was persistent. On Hennepin Avenue, en route to one of their favorite restaurants and sitting in the same rear seats where they’d met, Humphries got down on one knee and proposed.
There were at least two other passengers on the bus to serve as witnesses. Overcome, Farone and Humphries can’t really remember how they reacted. In a blur, they exited the bus and finished their trip on foot.
For Humphries, the proposal was a fitting conclusion. The night they’d met, he’d unsuccessfully tried to get Farone to join his friends at the Green Mill. It was the same restaurant they were going to on the night of the engagement.
“I finally got her to the bar that she shot me down at,” Humphries said.
In June, the engagement ended with a wedding that played up their relationship’s bus origins. A model bus served as a cake topper while a bus stop sign and route maps were among the décor. “And of course it was mentioned in all of the speeches,” Farone said.
Photo courtesy Garrett Tetrick