Fitness partners get engaged at Kiwanis Club 5K

WESTERN BUREAU:

Five years after financial adviser Natasha Rhoden took on fitness trainer Errol Granston as a client, their shared passion for fitness has brought them to a new milestone in their relationship. On Sunday, Granston proposed to Rhoden at the 17th staging of the Kiwanis Club of Providence Montego Bay’s 5K run/walk/wheelchair event, and she gleefully accepted.

The proposal took place on the main stage at Harmony Beach Park in Montego Bay, St James, in front of hundreds of fellow runners during the gospel concert and awards ceremony that followed the event. Granston went down on one knee and presented an engagement ring to an overwhelmed Rhoden, who wrapped both her arms and legs around him as she exclaimed, “Yes!”

Granston, 43, operator of the Montego Bay-based Run Squad 876 running club, told Lifestyle that he arranged the proposal with the approval and assistance of the event’s committee.

“Natasha and I have been friends for about five years or more, but once we started doing 5Ks and became part of the running club, which I am the director for, we became more than just regular friends,” he said.

“Since it was running in 5Ks that brought us into our relationship stage, I felt it would have been appropriate to do a proposal at this 5K event,” he added.

Granston, who hails from the Farm Heights community, said he began making arrangements in early September, when he realised the Kiwanis Club’s 5K was the next event on the calendar.

“When I felt that the time was right to propose, it just so happened that the Kiwanis Club’s 5K was next on the list of events. I contacted a couple of the committee members in early September, and they gave me the green light that it was okay to proceed with the proposal,” he explained.

For 34-year-old Rhoden, an entrepreneur who also hails from Farm Heights, the proposal came as a complete surprise, although she admitted that she had noticed a few unusual signs from Granston in the lead-up to the big moment.

“I still feel like I am floating, still beaming with love and crying and feeling butterflies. I was really surprised by the proposal, and usually Errol is not really good at surprises. But I have to take my hat off to him because he really pulled that one off very nicely,” she said.

“He was posting registration for the event, and he was encouraging persons to be there because something epic was going to take place. Everybody was curious, including myself, and I was like, ‘What epic thing is going to happen?’” Rhoden recalled.

“At one point, I heard him mumbling something to himself, like he was trying to recite something. Now that everything is out in the open, I am realising that it was going to take a great amount of courage to go up there and do that.”

Rhoden told Lifestyle that, although people had often told her that she and Granston would make a good couple, she believes their bond grew stronger because she took the time to get to know him for herself.

“Persons from the club, and family members from here and abroad, always said that both of us would make a perfect couple. But I took my own time to know him, and I feel like our bond is even stronger,” she said.

lifestyle@gleanerjm.com