In the glow of the Winter Carnival Ice Castle, a few dozen people — some of them in Vikings garb, others bearing shovels — broke out in a choreographed dance. Then, as several of the dancers turned to reveal the words “CLUEY WILL YOU MARRY ME2,” a grown man collapsed in tears.

His fiancee was there for him.

So were those in the “flash mob” — folks as passionate about the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt as they are — as they helped Jana Armstead pop the question to Brad TeGantvoort.

If the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt is about anything — aside from getting outdoors, digging for hours in the cold and winning $10,000 — it’s about the people you meet on the hunt. “Cluey,” aka “ClueMaster” TeGantvoort, and Armstead, aka “Me2,” met searching for the medallion, shared their first kiss during a middle-of-the-night hunt and now, surrounded by so many hunter friends, officially became engaged.

Then the group left the starlit scene outside St. Paul’s Rice Park and headed to Shamrocks bar to eat cake, wait for newspaper bearing the night’s Treasure Hunt clue and maybe go out for a few hours of scouting.

The longtime couple “met” on an online Treasure Hunt message board, where they went by their aliases, “Me2” said. “We were friends to begin with. Being in the Cooler Crew,” she said, referring to a large community of hunters that gather before and after the hunt, “you’re like family.”

The couple — and the fellow hunters who embraced them for this milestone — go back many St. Paul treasure hunts but others, too, like the Vikings Treasure Hunt, which “Clue Metoo”/”Team Brana” won in 2014.

Armstead’s proposal Thursday — on Day 5 of this year’s hunt — marked eight years to the day since that first kiss, during a dig at Crosby Farm Regional Park in St. Paul.

“There were fireworks, like you see in a cartoon — 100 percent fireworks and butterflies,” said TeGantvoort, the romantic one.

Their friends — people who’d noodled all those cryptic clues together over the years — said it was long overdue.

“If anybody was meant to be, it’s them,” said longtime hunter and friend Trygve Olsen of Eagan, who led TeGantvoort on a mini Treasure Hunt that day, leading up to the flash-mob proposal. “They belong together. Everyone knows it.”

Said Melissa Weeks, Armstead’s co-conspirator who helped pull off the production: “They had the greatest friendship and I always thought they were adorable. You could tell there was a spark there, but they never did anything, out of respect for their children.”

“They’re both goofy,” Weeks said, but had faced their share of adversity in life. He was widowed and had health problems, and the two also had close extended family to care for.

Before they exchanged their vows, they wanted the kids to be out on their own, and “our health and our family’s health has to be (better),” said Armstead, who calls herself a “lifelong St. Paul girl.”

“Then — bam! — we had empty nests,” said TeGantvoort, of Inver Grove Heights.

Chris “ChrisDigger” Sumner of Ham Lake, a good friend and a member of the Cooler Crew — the community of hunters marking their 20th year of get-togethers around the Treasure Hunt — spoke up to tell their story:

“Brad asked Jana four or five times,” he said. “Even the last time it was super cool, they were on top of the Capitol during the (August solar) eclipse. He got down and it was like, ‘It’s time. I love you, baby. We’re meant to be.’ But her daughter had just gotten engaged, and she didn’t want to overshadow that. … So he threw in the towel and said, ‘… If you really want to do it, you’re going to have to ask me.’ ”

Actually, she said yes and accepted his ring on the Capitol’s rooftop Quadriga — where they accidentally got locked out and had to wait for the next tour group to enter — during that Aug. 21 eclipse.

But a death and health crises in the family followed. By December, when she heard St. Paul was building a Winter Carnival ice palace after all, she knew it was time for their “silver linings.” She made an event page on Facebook and invited her longtime Treasure Hunt friends.

“Everybody came out of the woodwork really fast,” she said. “I was hoping this would be — that’s OK if this is bigger than (the wedding.) That’s OK.”

They want an intimate wedding, but likely with a bunch of Treasure Hunters to witness.

Their new life together will continue be a balance of their two personalities.

“We complement each other,” Armstead said.

“She’s the brains and the beauty and the boss,” TeGantvoort said. “I bring her up, and she brings me down to earth.”

He went on: “I love every pixel of her. I don’t want to be with anybody else. Doing the dishes, cleaning litter boxes — it’s a long honeymoon with her.”