MOUNDS VIEW, Minn. -- All sorts of proposals have gone before the Mounds View City Council, but nothing like the one that popped up last week.

About an hour into the July 11 meeting, following the approval of a sanitary sewer rehab project and other routine votes, Council member Al Hull took the time set aside for council comments to propose marriage to his girlfriend, Tasha Kimaiga. Let’s cut to the chase: She accepted.

But first Hull set up the moment by pouring his heart out. At times, his emotions took over and he struggled with his words while telling the council and any cable-access TV viewers watching it unfold what Kimaiga means to him and how she has been supporting and loving him pretty much since they first met through an online dating website in April 2015.

Hull, 51, said her devotion was fully evident after his cancer diagnosis this past March.

He said he now knows what Lou Gehrig meant with his famous Yankee Stadium speech.

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“Ever since I met her I’ve been the luckiest guy in the world,” he said, his voice cracking.

She was there for his daily radiotherapy in May and early June to treat plasmacytoma, which is cancer of blood plasma cells.

“She helped me through a lot and it was a difficult time,” he said, his voice shaking. “And she gave me the strength to carry on and have a smiling face and joke about it. I want to live the rest of my life with her as possibly my wife.”

With that, Hull got up from his council chair and - with a ring box in his left hand - headed toward Kimaiga, sitting in the back row of the council chambers.

“This is a little awkward,” he said.

But it was enough to make city administrator Jim Ericson remove his glasses and wipe his eyes.

After a slow jog, Hull went down on bended knee.

“Surprise,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, and then hugged him.

Clapping and congratulatory handshakes followed.

“Let the record reflect that she said yes,” council member Carol Mueller said.

Kimaiga said afterward that Hull, who’s been toiling on the council for 10 years, persuaded her to go to the council meeting - her first - by suggesting there was a hot topic on the agenda. She was in the dark about his intent until the actual proposal.

“I’m still a little bit shocked,” she said last week. “I wasn’t totally expecting it. At some point … yes. But I wasn’t thinking now. At first I just thought he was kind of acknowledging me.”

Just two other people were in the council chambers - Brian Erickson, director of public works, and Todd Kruse, president of the Twin Cities North Chamber of Commerce.

“I’ve been to a lot of city council meetings, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kruse said last week.

Ericson said the proposal was a “shock to all of us.”

“It was a very heartfelt speech and he was trying to get the words out,” he said. “It was pretty sweet.”

Council member Sherry Gunn took a picture with her cellphone.

“There were tears at the dais,” she said.

Hull said last week that his cancer diagnosis was only part of their story. About three months after they met, his father, Richard, died of lung cancer.

“He was my hero,” Hull said of the former Army colonel.

Kimaiga said Hull needed her.

“He was going through a lot of things all at once - one thing after another - and I was just happy to help him through it,” said Kimaiga, who is a nurse at a senior home.

Hull said he wasn’t looking for anything serious when he created an online dating profile, “but, for whatever reason, Tasha and I just clicked.”

He said he picked the council meeting because he thought it would be special.

“She’s had a tough life,” he said. “She’s been a single mother. I wanted to spoil her a little bit and make it a special moment, memorable.”

Gunn is glad Hull thinks enough of them that he felt to do it when and where he did.

“I think we all consider ourselves kind of like a family,” she said.

It will be a second marriage for both of them. Kimaiga, 46, has five adult children, and Hull has an 8-year-old daughter.

“He’s a wonderful guy,” she said. “He’s awesome. He’s the greatest guy I ever met.”

They were given more good news Wednesday when a checkup showed the cancer has not spread.

“The doctors are not too worried,” said Hull, a fixture in town as a longtime manager at The Station, a convenience store. “Apparently this is very treatable. But I’ve learned our time is short, and I want Tasha in my life for all of it.”