Skip to main content

"So he got on one knee. And uttered the plea: 'My dearest giraffe, will you marry me?'"

That's the climax in either one of the most romantic or strangest real-life love stories.

And the person doing the asking? Is a gorilla in the book, a man in real life.

The story goes like this: Paul Phillips wrote a book titled A Tall Tale. It tells the story of a gorilla who meets a giraffe and falls madly in love with her.

"She [his girlfriend] loves giraffes," Phillips wrote on Reddit where he documented the adventure. "We always go to zoos for them. I'm clumsy and big like a gorilla, always using brute force to solve problems. I played off of that with my writing."

In the book, the gorilla proposes and the giraffe says yes.

Phillips only hoped it would go like that in real life.

Completely unbeknownst to his girlfriend, Phillips had the book made – hardcover and all – and stashed in a library, to be hidden until he and the lucky woman arrived. After a nice dinner out, Phillips told his girlfriend he had to return a couple of library books. Since his girlfriend enjoys looking at children's books for her nieces and nephews, he took her to the children's section where A Tall Tale had been carefully placed just moments earlier.

With an undercover photographer hiding a row away, Phillips asked his girlfriend to read the book out loud to him.

At the part in the book when the gorilla gets down on one knee, Phillips followed suit.

"Funny thing is when I got on one knee she completely stopped reading. She said "NO WAY!" and I had to tell her to keep reading," Phillips wrote.

Luckily for all involved, she said yes.

Phillips definitely gets points for originality, and said on Reddit he's thinking about making miniature copies of the book to give as wedding gifts.

And the book, rightfully, ends:

"When she finally answered, he could not stop grinning because he knew, in his heart, this was just The Beginning!"

Interact with The Globe