A Main Street proposal

When Stowe Middle School teacher Mike Pittinaro decided to get hitched last November, there was no question the proposal would take place in Stowe.

Mike met his fiancée, Kate Halladay, a paraeducator at Peoples Academy High School, while both were living in Colorado. They met five years ago through mutual friends.

The couple lives in Elmore, but shares close ties to Stowe, making it the perfect place for Mike to ask Kate to marry him.

Rather than searching for a spot with romantic mountain views, he took a different route: the Main Street crosswalk.

“I wanted to do it in a place that we could always visit,” Mike said. “There was something about doing it on the crosswalk so that we could always drive through Stowe, and just for that moment, remember it. Plus, Stowe is a beautiful town.”

He wasn’t worried about surprising Kate.

“She was convinced that I would never ask her to marry me,” he said.

Mike told Kate that he needed to take a photo of the Akeley Memorial Building, Stowe’s town hall, for a school-related reason. Then he parked at Green Mountain Inn and asked her to walk across Main Street with him.

Snow was falling as Mike dropped down on one knee and proposed.

“I did slow down and give people the stop signal with my hand,” Mike said. “I figured people would wait.”

Kate said yes, once she realized Mike was serious.

“She was so surprised and she was worried about being in the middle of the street,” Mike said. “She thought I was playing a joke on her at first.”

The couple will marry June 20 at a private residence off Moss Glen Falls Road. They are considering a European honeymoon.