Wellstar Kennestone ER nurses get engaged on hospital’s helipad

The life of an ER nurse can be stressful just by the nature of the job. Add the pressure of trying to pull off a surprise marriage proposal, and you get what Jacob Young called “by far the most stressful day of my life.”

“(B)ut it was worth it,” he added in an interview with WGCL.

“It took a village,” Young told CNN. “It took about three other nurses, two or three people from my management team to come up with this whole scheme, lie, to get her up on the chopper at the exact right moment for what I thought was the perfect idea for us.”

It was perfect because his now fiancee, Kelsey Dunlap, is also an ER nurse at Wellstar Kennestone in Marietta. The two met about a year ago during Dunlap’s job interview. “I shadowed him one night and then fell in love with Kennestone and everyone who was there,” she told WGCL.

But when Dunlap wheeled a stretcher to the helipad last month, she had no idea she’d walk back into the hospital as an engaged woman.

There was no patient, but she saw Young approach from around the chopper.

“It didn’t register what was going on until he dropped to a knee, and then it clicked,” Dunlap told WGCL. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s asking me to marry him.’”

The photographer who captured the moment was also a ruse. “I knew (the photographer) was there because he told me he was taking pictures for ER Nurses Week,” she told CNN. “I honestly didn’t think twice about it and (he) had me totally fooled all morning, taking pictures of us doing random nursing tasks.”

The surprise was also captured by colleagues, who recorded it from a window overlooking the helipad. You can hear them cheer as events unfold.

Dunlap posted the video to the social media platform TikTok, where it has near half a million likes and nearly 2,000 comments.

“I’m still in awe,” Dunlap wrote in a Facebook post. “I can’t wait to become Mrs. Young and spend forever with my best friend.”

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