VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Dawn Stahl was awarded teacher of the month at Green Run Collegiate, but there turned out to be a surprise much bigger than that waiting for her on stage.

It was the surprise of a lifetime, as her boyfriend, Sidney Keith, proposed to her there.

“The energy was great. Yeah. I wanted her to say yes to thunderous applause, and I wasn’t disappointed,” said Keith, a teacher at First Colonial High School. 

The two are newly engaged, and their connection goes back to 1998.

“We met doing Dracula at the little theater of Virginia Beach, and we actually both had the same theater teacher at First Colonial [High School], and then she was directing Dracula,” said Stahl, who teaches special education for emotional/learning disabilities at Green Run Collegiate. “So, we both ended up auditioning and we both ended up getting a part and that’s when that’s when we originally met.”

The two love birds lost contact for about 17 years, but then their paths reconnected.

“About five years ago, six years ago, [at] Green Run Collegiate, I was a teacher there. She started substitute teacher, and of course now, she’s a teacher there. But that’s where we reconnected with Green Run Collegiate on the Green Run campus,” Keith said. 

For the proposal at Green Run Collegiate, the room was filled with students and faculty. It was a place Keith said was best to get on one knee.

“It felt right to be in that place with those people,” he said. “In a high school, it really is the truth, and it felt right to do it that way. And I couldn’t picture it having gone down any other way.”

Keith said Stahl froze up on stage but she still said yes. Stahl said she wasn’t expecting it, but she’s excited for what the future holds.

“I’m most excited about just building this future together,” she said. “And there is a camaraderie when we come home from work, and we can connect about our day and we both are here for the same reason. It’s for the students, it’s for the kids, it’s for our community. And so being able to come home and spend our lives together, like building that community together, even though we’re at different schools, it’s an amazing feeling.”