Firefighter James Pappageorge Way

TRANSCRIPT

[Gina Pinos]: My name is Gina Pinos and Jimmy was my fiancé and we lived together for a few years, right before 9/11.

So, I came home and he was hanging out with Justin. You know, it was regular weekday. We were in the kitchen and we were all trying to get some food on the table. And then he asks me to go and get something from the freezer. So I go, I get whatever he asks for and I close the freezer and I come back around and he’s like, “No, you didn’t find it.”

And I’m like, “What are you talking about? This is what you wanted.”

So he’s like, “No, go back in. Look! Look on the left side and you’ll find it.”

And when I finally looked, it was a little further back, it was an engagement ring in the box.

And then when I go and I close the freezer door, he’s standing right behind the freezer door, holding Justin. The both of them at the same time said, “Will you marry us?”

[music]

It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t like something out of a Hawaiian proposal or anything like that on Waikiki but it was just the fact that the whole thing was about the three of us. It wasn’t, “Will you marry me?” and Justin was going to be the side. It meant the world to me, obviously because we were all one and he was such a giving, unconditionally loving person. Somebody that can love you like that and your child as their own.

So that’s how he proposed. And they were both wearing matching FDNY baseball hats and T-shirts [laughter] in their, like, you know, Fruit of the Loom shorts [laughter].