High-flying proposal offers ride of a lifetime

When it comes to romancing his girlfriend of six years, Johnny Guffey has always been a bit off-center.

When he first met Lauri Lankheit at a downtown bar, she struck up a conversation with him based on the fact that he was wearing a Notre Dame hat that was being held together with staples and duct tape.

On a Valentine's Day, he steered clear of "cliched things" and went to a grocery store and loaded up on her favorite foods like Cap'n Crunch's crunchberries, hot tamales and Reese's peanut butter cups.

And then on one of their dating anniversaries, the 28-year-old architecture student put Lankheit in a Winston Cup car, in which she was driven around a track at 180 mph.

So what did she expect when he popped the big question -- him on one knee in a nice restaurant? Try instead a surprise proposal in an airplane ride over his parent's home Tuesday night with "Will U Marry Me?" written in 100 feet of 10-foot-tall Christmas lights across the yard.

"She always has fun with the fact that I do things that are unique," he said Tuesday, a couple hours of before the flight. "I've had this idea since I was 16. I don't know where I got it, whether it was a dream or what. But I've kept it to myself. She has never once heard me tell her what I might do. She has no idea."

With the help of a friend, Guffey -- who loves flying, though he is not a pilot himself -- told Lankheit that they should take a ride with a pilot friend who is doing his annual checkup of his airplane. His best friend showed up 10 minutes before the flight and hid a video camera on the plane to capture her reaction.

Her reaction, as he tried to kneel before her in the plane, was yes.

"I saw it, and I just cried and laughed at the same time," she said after what very well may be the ride of her life. "When I saw it, I thought, 'This is Johnny all right.' I knew this was totally his personality."

Lankheit, who works at the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center, said she really believed they were flying to Paducah as part of the plane's annual checkup.

"My friends all asked me if he was going to propose over the holiday, and I said that was too predictable," she said.

The plane flew over Guffey's parents home near Fruitland shortly after 7 p.m., while his parents and her parents stood in the yard.

"We were just so flabbergasted," said Lauri's mother, Melanie Lankheit. "We were stunned he went to all this."

Guffey's father, Ted, wasn't so surprised that his son went to such lengths to propose.

"I kind of figured it would be something large," he said. "That's Johnny. But then, she's just a super, super girl."

Lankheit said she hopes for a wedding this summer after Guffey graduates from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. She said life with Johnny Guffey probably will not lack excitement.

"It's never boring with him," she said. "Every day is an adventure."

So now Lankheit can surely expect something fun for her 10th anniversary, right?

"She can expect all she wants," Guffey said. "But I'll have 10 years to think of something. There's no telling what I might come up with."

smoyers@semissourian.com

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