The day before Valentine's Day, David Wood told his girlfriend she could pick the restaurant for their Valentine's dinner. Cost was no object and he'd even wear a tie.

His gal, Joli Hurst Reavis, knew something was up.

"He's a coupon kind of guy," she said. "It's usually, 'Where do we have the gift certificate tonight?' "

She picked the new Bookbinders Grill in Christiansburg and went to bed Tuesday night wondering if this was going to be a special Valentine's Day.

She woke up to a marriage proposal. In the newspaper. Splashed across the entire front of The Roanoke Times' Extra section.

Reavis doesn't get the newspaper at home, which serves as a cautionary tale for all those looking for love and happiness. If you don't read the newspaper, you might miss a marriage proposal!

After getting a morning call from a co-worker that she needed to see the newspaper, Reavis left her Christiansburg home and grabbed a copy at the Deli Mart. She was stunned to see her boyfriend pictured with an engagement ring and the headline "Joli, will you marry me?"

The first ones to know her answer -- "yes"-- were the Deli Mart clerks who asked what her what she would say. Then she called to tell Wood.

Wood, who lives in Glenvar, raced down to Reavis' workplace, First National Bank of Christiansburg, and brought her a bouquet and made the formal, in-person proposal.

They had that dinner at Bookbinders and made plans for a July wedding at Slate Mountain Presbyterian Church, one of the famous rock churches of Floyd County built of fieldstone by the late Bob Childress.

They hope to have a reception at the FloydFest site on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where they first met during the Wine Down the Music Trail festival. He was a volunteer for that festival, she was selling her artwork there. They met for lunch a few times, then didn't see each other for a while.

One day, Wood asked her in an e-mail "How are you surviving work?" Reavis, a vice president at the bank, wrote back, "I died three days ago. Didn't you see my obituary in the newspaper?"

Now, many guys might interpret an e-mailed death notice as a highly creative way of saying "stop bugging me" and get the hint.

Wood, however, is not one of those guys. He sent a funeral wreath to the bank. Reavis loved it.

So, after a rapid courtship, Wood, a soon-to-be ex-bachelor who's 44, thought he and the once-married Reavis, 38, might be ready to Wine Down the Marriage Trail.

His mother found the perfect vehicle for a proposal. In January, the Extra section had asked people to step forward if they were ready to propose in print. From the e-mails of interest Extra received, the staff chose Wood.

"I can't tell you how happy this makes us," said Ruth Wood, David's mom.

Wood's parents, Ruth and Melvin Wood, live in Floyd County. Their power was knocked out on Valentine's Day morning, but that didn't stop Melvin from getting up to get the paper when it arrived at 3:30 a.m. Ruth almost couldn't bear to look. A nephew in Wisconsin and a granddaughter in North Carolina watched Wood's proposal in video on roanoke.com.

"They held their phones up so we could hear it over our cellphone," Ruth said.

Wood had an alternate plan had the newspaper not selected him. He put together a bag of gag gifts, complete with a chocolate trout in a package that read "You're a keeper," and was going to hide the ring in the bottom of the bag.

For all Reavis cared, he could've given her a real trout wrapped in a newspaper bearing his wedding proposal.

"It didn't matter what, where, when or how he asked me," she said. "I was going to say, 'yes.'"