Jimmy Kimmel’s Proposal ‘I Do-Over’ For Kansas City Couple Has New Twist

KANSAS CITY, MO — Jimmy Kimmel is having a good week. Most notably, the late-night prankster inserted himself in the healthcare debate on Capitol Hill, taking the discussion to a higher, more personal level. But Kimmel also gave a Kansas City couple a proposal “I do-over” after groom-to-be dropped Seth Dixon dropped the ring he planned to give Ruth Salas into a pond earlier this month.

Kimmel had to resort to a bit of trickery to get the couple to Los Angeles for the surprise. After a video of the proposal on a bridge in a Kansas City caught fire on the internet, Kimmel’s staff convinced Dixon and Salas that they would be interviewed on ABC’s “20/20” news magazine and threw in the tickets to Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show as a sort of consolation prize.

The video was heartbreaking. Dixon knelt on one knee, fumbled the ring and watched as it bounce twice and disappeared between the slats of the bridge. The couple’s friends jumped into the pond to see if they could find the ring, but it seemed gone forever. (Sign up for real-time news alerts and morning newsletters from Kansas City Patch. Find your local Missouri Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Kimmel set things right on his program. The set included a bridge that was actually nicer than the one Dixon proposed on, and when Kimmel called them on stage and asked them why they thought they had been invited, they repeated the ruse that had gotten them on a plane to Los Angeles.

“I want to give you a do-over, an ‘I do-over,’ ” Kimmel said. Just then, a jewelry designer for the network’s “The Bachelor” program came out with a box containing an pear-shaped diamond ring surrounded by 100 smaller diamonds.

“Is that as nice as the ring you lost?” Kimmel asked. “I mean, we never got to see that.”

The lost ring cost $3,000, the Kansas City Star reported earlier, but the replacement was a stunner. “I’m pretty sure it’s a little bit more,” Salas said.

It was a sweet moment.

“We’ve been together for four years,” he said, facing Salas. “You’re the love of my life. We’ve had ups and downs, and we’ve gotten through it all. We know this day’s been coming for a long time. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Dixon, an Uber driver, knelt on one knee. “Will you marry me?” he asked Salas, a substitute teacher.

She said yes, of course. The ring didn’t slip from his grasp and he put it on her finger. The audience cheered, confetti shot across the bridge and they kissed.

End of story? No.

Back in Kansas City, a complete stranger who had seen a video of the proposal gone wrong on Facebook, grabbed his metal detector and began the 170-mile drive from his home in Springfield, Missouri, determined to find the lost ring and return it to the couple.

“I wanted to make sure they got it back before somebody else found it and had the opportunity to not give it back,” Long told KSHB-TV. He found it Saturday, Sept. 16, a few days before the couple went on Kimmel’s program. They made a full disclosure to Kimmel, but he insisted the keep it.

“Even with them knowing everything, they still decided to bless us with a new ring,” Dixon wrote on Facebook. “After the show, we again mentioned the ring situation. They again said they wanted us to keep the new ring!”

Images via “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” video on YouTube