Clammy Hands Blamed as Picturesque Marriage Proposal Turns Into a Three-Day Nightmare for B.C. Couple

Jordan Remple staged the perfect marriage proposal for the love of his life, Jodi Hodge, on a bright Sunday afternoon at the picturesque White Rock pier in British Columbia. With his heart thumping and palms sweating, he got down on one knee and trembled a bit as he pulled an engagement ring from his pocket…

“Then I hear this clink,” Remple told The Province. The $3,000 ring had slipped through his fingers, bounced once on the pier and then disappeared through the boards and into the sea.

The 25-year-old Langley, B.C., man was devastated. “I just sat there for a second in disbelief,” he said.

Remple explained to his girlfriend of two years that her engagement ring had just fallen into the water beneath the pier, putting a damper on his well-intentioned surprise. The 22-year-old Hodge reassured him that it was just an unfortunate accident.

Now he had to figure out how to save the ring. “I wasn’t going to let it go,” he said.

Once he composed himself, Remple got to work. He drove to Walmart, where bought a pair of goggles, a towel and an underwater flashlight. He quickly learned that the water in British Columbia in the middle of May is a bit too chilly to navigate without the proper gear.

Next, he contacted a friend, who was a scuba diver. But he didn’t have air tanks and couldn’t stay underwater long enough to find the diamond ring.

A few days later, Remple and Hodge returned to the pier at low tide to scour the breakwater with a metal detector. Still no luck.

The couple was about to give up the search, but Remple said he had to give it one more shot. “I had to give it everything I had,” he told The Province.

In a last-ditch effort, he called his father’s best friend, Robert MacDonald, who works as a port inspection diver for the Canadian Forces. When MacDonald learned of Remple’s dilemma, he quickly gathered his scuba gear and headed for the pier.

With a visibility of barely one foot, it took the experienced diver about 45 minutes to spot the ring resting on a rock about 15 feet from where it had slipped through the pier.

Now, with the ring tightly in hand, Remple got on one knee and completed the proposal he started three days earlier. Jodi accepted with a tearful, “Yes!”

Hodge told The Province that her fiancé’s perseverance in finding the ring — especially diving in the freezing water with no gear — was as romantic as it gets.

“I got a three-day proposal,” she said. “How many people get that?”