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NYC Marathon cancelled, man still proposes to runner girlfriend at finish line

Martin O'Donoghue planned to propose to his girlfriend, Hannah Vahala, when she crossed the NYC Marathon finish line last weekend.

"I'd talked to the organizers," O'Donoghue told Huffington Post, adding that he planned to hold up a sign that read: "If you finish in five and a half hours, I'll marry you."

(He planned to bring a marker with him so he could cross out "five and a half hours" and add Vahala's time — if her pace was slower than anticipated — to ensure that her time fell within his proposal conditions.)

Even though the marathon was cancelled, O'Donoghue still went through with the proposal.

On Saturday, O'Donoghue brought Vahala, who had travelled to New York from Atlanta, Georgia, for the big race, and her friends and family to Central Park.

"I just basically said, 'Look, let's go to the finish line and do it," said O'Donoghue.

The tearful runner said yes.

Following the marathon's cancellation — a decision that affected 40,000 elite athletes — runners still flocked to the race site. Some ran the route as "a display of New York's resilience," the Daily Mail reports, while others banded together to join the Sandy relief effort.