Standing on the asphalt below the East 73rd Street winter lights, Ryan McGlynn was nervous. Though he had prepared his main points in advance, standing in front of the woman he loves on the Upper East Side block he knew so well, holding a ring, worried he wouldn’t be able to say all the things he wanted to. “What was going through my head is, ‘I hope she’s happy and excited,’ and I could see it on her face that she was, so I thought I did a good job,” McGlynn, 31, told Upper East Site of the moment he proposed to his now-fiancée, Mindy McGoughran, 30, last Saturday, November 16, 2024, on the same tree-lined Upper East Side street they had strolled down on their first date. Upper East Siders Ryan and Mindy met nearly four years ago and have been together ever since. The couple met as many do these days, on a dating app. After talking for a month, they met up at Lenox Hill bistro The Bar Room, at 117 East 60th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues, then walked through the neighborhood. Ryan and Mindy’s first date included hours spent talking under the East 73rd Street winter lights. It being February, they came upon the East 73rd Street winter lights, a more than 20-year-long tradition organized by neighbors on the block between Second and Third Avenues, of wrapping their trees in thousands of little white lights. “We went and just walked and probably spent an hour just talking under the lights; I know her feet were freezing off,” Ryan laughed, explaining that pandemic restrictions were still in effect at the time, so they couldn’t duck into a café or other business. “I always kind of pictured doing it [proposing] back there under the lights.” Though Ryan got Mindy to Lenox Hill with a ruse about a work party nearby, she hadn’t quite bought it. Once the couple reached the winter lights on East 73rd Street, Mindy knew they were not attending a work party. “I was like, ‘I think there’s a good chance that we’re gonna get engaged, and that’s just a diversion,'” she recalled. “An hour before we left, I was like, ‘Don’t be disappointed if that’s not what happens, and it really is a real work thing.” When they turned down East 73rd Street and saw the lights, she knew. Ryan proposed to Mindy under the East 73rd Street winter lights where they had spent their first date. “Before I even fully said ‘will you marry me,’ I think she said yes,” Ryan gushed. “I wouldn’t change it, anything, [even] the bumbling words... It felt very New York; just the whole thing under the trees on the street, people are walking by telling you congratulations. It was perfect.” Ryan’s picture perfect Upper East Side proposal went off without a hitch and Mindy said yes. They had a 15-minute walk to The Bar Room, where their first date began, to let it sink in before seeing their families, who Mindy had no idea were there to share their joy. “I think everyone, the second they saw us, knew it was a yes,” Ryan said. “My mom has four boys, and always wanted a daughter, and said now she has one.” The young Upper East Siders said the proposal was very ‘New York’ with neighbors congratulating them. “It’s hard to describe the feeling,” Mindy explained, just three days after saying yes to spending her life with Ryan. “I was very emotional; [it’s] such a high high, not a place I feel like you get to very often.” Now, planning the wedding and their future, the couple is confident they’ll be sticking around. Ryan and Mindy, now engaged, are planning the rest of their Upper East Side love story. “I love the Upper East Side; this has always been home for me,” Mindy, who moved to the neighborhood from Ohio almost 10 years ago, said. “Her love for the Upper East Side is what makes me love it so much,” Ryan, a Washington D.C. native, added. “I can’t wait to see those lights just on a normal day, and hopefully, we’ll always be able to come back over the holiday time, no matter where we are in life, and those lights will be there.”