Whisking away your longtime girlfriend on a European vacation, and then asking for her hand in marriage proposal inside a 300-year-old German church, sounds like something out of a romantic comedy.
Why Dale Earnhardt Jr. proposed in a German church
Ever the romantic, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a special place picked out when he asked his girlfriend to marry him.
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But this was no movie script, nor a fairytale. This was just how Dale Earnhardt Jr. asked fiance Amy Reimann to marry him last week.
Earnhardt had been planning to propose to Reimann for “several months.” And with the couple and Earnhardt’s sister and brother-in-law taking a much-anticipated trip to Germany to trace the Earnhardt family’s linage, NASCAR’s most popular driver thought the timing was right.
“I picked that particular spot just because I wanted her to feel special,” Earnhardt said Friday at Sonoma Raceway. “I think to do it at that particular time, at that moment while we were in that church, may make that moment. And I thought it was just a great place to do it. I thought about it. Every other spot that I could think of just didn’t measure up, you know? It just wasn’t good enough or special enough for her.”
Earnhardt asked Reimann in a church his family used to attend, with the location chosen specifically because he wanted to make it “more memorable for her.”
The church in the small German town of Illesheim is where Earnhardt’s ninth and 10th grandfathers lived. This fact was verified when he visited the local archives and was shown a book containing records of births, deaths and baptisms that included the name Hamman Ehrenhart (the family name was changed to Earnhardt after arriving in the United States).
Reimann was “blown away” and didn’t expect the proposal, Earnhardt said. He didn’t rehearse what he was going to say to her, instead choosing to speak from the heart.
“My sister was asking me what I was going to say and I told her I didn’t have any idea, I was just going to go for it,” Earnhardt said. “It didn’t have to be perfect and maybe if it wasn’t perfect that was a good thing. I didn’t want to set it up to where it was cheesy, I just wanted it to be natural and impromptu.”
No date for the wedding has been announced. As for what follows the nuptials, Earnhardt is ready for fatherhood.
“I think the greatest accomplishment in life is to be able to raise a child,” Earnhardt said. “That would be awesome. That is definitely in the future.”
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