Irish eyes smiling as couple gets engaged

Every year Howard Beach native Maggie Newcombe cheers with family and friends at the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Manhattan. So it didn’t seem odd to her that a slew of relatives and buddies were by her side as her boyfriend Chris Poje, a firefighter with Engine 35 in Manhattan, came marching up Fifth Avenue to where she stood at 72nd Street.
But when Poje stopped in front of Newcombe, the 30-year-old real estate broker for Citi Habitats got the surprise of a lifetime. Poje, clad in his dress uniform and surrounded by fellow firefighters, bent down on one knee and asked, “Will you marry me, baby?”
Tears sprouted from Newcombe’s eyes and the blond beauty was totally overwhelmed, her mother Rene Newcombe said.
“I was totally surprised. It blew me away,” Maggie Newcombe gushed about the St. Patrick’s Day proposal. “He’s more on the shy side, so I didn’t think he would do something in front of so many people.”
Poje, 33, said he got the notion to propose on St. Pat’s when he stopped to give his girlfriend a kiss at last year’s parade, and she was left speechless.
“My friends joke that I’m like a detective or something. I’m very hard to surprise,” the bride-to-be said. “So this was so amazing. We are both from New York and have lived here our whole lives. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and I am super Irish. And we had all of New York cheering for us.”
Newcombe’s parents, her brother Danny Newcombe; friend Jessica Russo; godmother Rita Gibbons; Poje’s parents, Walter and Helga Poje; and his bud Charlie Scotti were also by her side.
“It was amazing that they could all be there to witness it,” she said, explaining that she clipped a published photo from the newspaper to show her children years down the road. “How many couples have a picture of their engagement?”
Newcombe said she was thrilled all of the plans fell into place — firefighters almost opted not to march in the parade after they were slighted for slowing down the parade last year.
“It was really up in the air if the firemen were marching,” Newcombe said, explaining that because the bravest were in the middle of the pack, they approached about two hours later than previous years. Incidentally, Newcombe was running unusually late; so her mother and brother called her frantically to make sure she didn’t miss her own engagement.
“[Newcombe] kept asking me, ‘What’s the big hurry?’ and I said, ‘Maggie, why don’t you hurry up and get here?’” her mother laughed, remembering that her daughter had once named Poje as the cutest guy she had ever met after first spotting him in high school.
As a first-year student at Christ the King in Middle Village, Newcombe had a schoolgirl crush on Poje, then a high school senior and basketball star.
But it wasn’t until years later — when Newcombe was 19, engaged and working as a model — that Ridgewood native Poje spotted a picture of his future fiancé and was smitten.
“The first thing I said to him was, ‘No, you lost your chance. I’m engaged now,’” Newcombe said. But she broke off her engagement shortly thereafter, and for the past four and a half years, she and Poje have been dating.
“What I love most about Chris is he has a great sense of humor, and he’s extremely easy going,” Newcombe said.
The adventurous couple, now living in Manhattan to be closer to Poje’s firehouse in Harlem, have tried mini marathons, skiing and skydiving in their spare time. In addition, the pair has teamed up for work — finding and renovating houses.
Newcombe had always told her boyfriend that she hoped when he proposed the shy guy would write a speech.
“But the truth is you never know what you’re going to love,” Newcombe said. “What he said, it was the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”