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Murray knew the Canadian rockers were big into connecting with their fans, but it was still a surprise when Kerman messaged him back soon after, with an equal level of enthusiasm for the project. The two bounced around several ideas — what if Kerman happened to wander on stage during an amateur open mic night, with the couple sitting in the crowd? — before settling on something a bit less public, but just as meaningful.

On Sunday afternoon, several hours before Arkells’ Bluesfest set at night, Murray and Katsuno strolled past a metal bench near the front entrance of the Canadian Museum of Nature, a walking route near the couple’s Centretown home that had become a ritual every weekend.

This time, someone that looked like a busker was sitting on the bench — Kerman, with a guitar in his hands, singing and playing an acoustic rendition of 11:11, their song. Katsuno couldn’t believe it at first. She did a double-take before realizing it was the Arkells’ frontman.

Photo by Photo courtesy Chris Murray / Ottawa Citizen

“She actually thought, because the band itself is really community engaged, that maybe they were doing a social media stunt,” said Murray. “I had to bring her around to the fact that, ‘No no, he’s here for me. He’s done this for us.’ ”

Murray didn’t need to say much more.

“I told her, ‘Listen, you know I’m longwinded and tend to go get carried away when I’m talking. So I’d rather just let Max and the words say what I need to say.’ She was confused, but then I dropped down, pulled out the ring and asked her to marry me.”

Katsuno said she was in such shock that she didn’t answer for “a good 30 seconds.”

“We both got emotional pretty quickly and started to cry,” said Katsuno, 28. “I was quite taken aback, but eventually once I recovered some sort of semblance of myself I said, ‘Of course,’ and we hugged and kissed.”

Several of the pair’s friends were snapping photos behind some nearby spindly trees and bushes — “not hiding very well,” said Katsuno, although she was too occupied to recognize their faces. They popped up from the foliage afterward and the whole lot embraced, Katsuno still in shock to see the lead singer of one of the couple’s favourite bands right there in the flesh.

“For us, for the band, it’s really a touching thing when a couple has one of our songs as their song,” said Kerman, who was running on no sleep after a red-eye flight from Calgary, but still came to carry out his part of the proposal. “I like when somebody takes the initiative to try something like that. Because with our band, we’re always taking chances. It never hurts to try or ask.”

The day of surprises wasn’t done, though. That night at the concert, Kerman got Murray and Katsuno backstage passes to meet and chat with the band, and then watch the show from the side of the stage before bringing the couple out in front of thousands of concertgoers to tell their story.