By Mirjam Donath
One minute and 50 seconds. That’s how much time Laszlo Jozsa and Borbala Nanai needed to engage on November 1, 2009. The 31-year-old Hungarian television producer went up to her girlfriend at the corner of 1st Ave and 60th street and asked her if she would marry him. Then he ran away.
See you at the altar! (Photo: Borbala Nanai)
It was 11.50 a.m. that Jozsa, who had run the marathon in Berlin, Copenhagen and Budapest before, spotted Nanai at the 25th kilometer. She was cheering for him, one amongst the 2 million spectators who egg the runners on in the world’s biggest marathon. Jozsa hunted out Nanai, hugged her, and proposed out of the blue.
“She was crying so she couldn’t say ‘yes’. She just nodded, moved her head but there were no words uttered,” Jozsa said, who did not go to his knees as it would have been hard for him to get up after 25 kilometers behind him.
Following the proposal Jozsa had to force himself to forget about his emotions to be able to continue the race. “It is not easy to run while you cry. It was another battle within me, just to make sure that I can continue the race,” he said.
Jozsa finished the race in 3 hours and 46 minutes, 9 minutes behind his personal best. The proposal took 2 minutes of it. But Jozsa said he did not want to blame his time on that. “It was a day of achievements,” he said.
Beyond Business 