Proposing, popping the big question, is usually a momentous occasion. Some guys spend months planning their proposal.
Not Kyle Loethen.
While shopping for an engagement ring at Helzberg Diamonds in Kansas City earlier this year, the company’s staff made him a proposal—if he chose a ring and asked his girlfriend to marry him in 48 hours, the ring would be on them.
Already comfortable with being on camera from his days modeling and acting in Los Angeles, he agreed.
“I still audition for commercials mostly in Kansas City and St. Louis, and I saw a Facebook post from this production company that Helzberg Diamonds was looking for guys about to propose,” he said. “The company was going to help educate the guys on how to purchase a ring, and we would be paid, so I decided to go and hoped I might get a good deal on the ring.”
He got a lot more than he bargained for, and the next day was a nerve-wracking whirlwind of emotions and activity, all planned by Helzberg staff and all captured by a video crew.
Every moment of his time—from picking out the ring, to picking out a new suit, receiving a haircut and a shave—was video taped. After convincing his then girlfriend, Madison Burke, that they had been chosen to appear in a commercial, she agreed to drive to Kansas City. After she was treated to hair and makeup and donning a black dress with rhinestones, soon the big moment arrived. Standing on the candle-lit stage at the Kauffman Performing Arts Center, Loethen got down on bended knee and proposed.
“I think most girls dream about the day they will be proposed to. I know I certainly did. Kyle’s proposal was everything I dreamed about and more. One of the things that was so special about our engagement was his sweet proposal speech,” she said.
“From the moment our eyes first met, my heart felt something for you.
We started off as friends, but as I got to know you, my heart began to melt for you.
On our first official date, as we walked around the Governor’s Garden, I knew
there was something special about this relationship.
You’re everything I was ever looking for and my heart keeps falling more and more in love with you each and every single day.
I want to spend the rest of our lives together, and I don’t want to wait any longer…
Madison, will you marry me?”
Kyle proposing to Madison at the Kauffman Performing Arts Center in Kansas City.
Their experiences can be found on Madison’s blog, www.MadisonLoethen.com, and on a video running on Helzberg Diamonds’ website, www.helzberg.com/category/marketing/wepropose.do.
The couple also appeared on several news programs in Kansas City and in her hometown of St. Louis, including Fox 2 News, where Burke had interned. She graduated from Lindenwood University with a bachelors in public relations and broadcast journalism and then moved to Mid-Missouri where she has lived for the past three years.
Born and raised in Jefferson City, Loethen’s father, David, is the co-owner of AQI, a coin-operated amusement business, and his mother, Diana works for ECI Software Solutions, formerly OMD. After graduating from Helias Catholic High School, Loethen headed west and attended Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where he received a bachelors degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing. After that he spent time modeling, acting and producing video content. His younger brother, Chad, an event producer and real estate agent, and younger sister, Carissa, who is on-air on E! Online, both still live in Los Angeles.
“I held many jobs in front of and behind the camera and in the corporate world at studios such as MTV, Fox and HBO,” he said.
After spending more than 10 years in Los Angeles, he decided to come home to “get back to his Midwestern roots.”
“Time was passing by and I wanted to spend more time with my family,” he said. “There was also a shift in the entertainment industry from traditional media to digital media. I felt like I didn’t have to live in Los Angeles to continue work in that field.”
He met Burke when they both worked at KMIZ-TV, the ABC affiliate, in Columbia, Missouri. He was in 
marketing and sales and she was a reporter.
“I walk in the Jefferson City bureau office and he smiled and flashed his dimples and I thought ‘what a cutie.’”
He remembers that moment, too.
“Our eyes locked as she walked by and I instantly had butterflies in my stomach. I thought she was beautiful,” he said. “We were both dating other people at the time and we got to know each other hanging out with co-workers. We were friends for an entire year.”
After meeting her, one of his friends, Jake Wadley, told him, “this was the girl he would marry.”
“He became my best friend and that’s when I knew,” Burke said.
Loethen finally decided to ask her out when she put in her two weeks notice and decided to take on a new job.
He went on to work at Learfield and she at Newsy. Now he’s helping out at his father’s company and is also the president of the board for Capitol City Cinema, and she’s a multimedia marketing specialist at Boone Hospital, where she runs the hospital’s social media pages, produces videos, takes photographs, and writes for the hospital’s magazine.
Engagement ring from Helzberg Diamond’s Artiste by Scott Kay collection. It’s an almost two carat, semi-mount engagement ring with a cushion-cut loose diamond in the center.
The busy couple recently attended Carissa’s beach wedding in Key West Florida, where they couldn’t help but think about their own nuptials.
“My sister was giving all kind of advice, and she already had a good guest list put together for my family,” he said.
Following a long standing family tradition, since his younger sister was marrying before Loethen and his younger brother, both older un-married siblings had to dance through a hog trough, brought by their aunt.
They’re planning for a May 2017 wedding in Chesterfield, where her mother, Michelle, who heads communications for Westminster Christian Academy, and father, Tim, a computer programmer for Express Scripts, live. Their reception will be held at the Doubletree Hotel there.
They’re still working out the many details involved in a wedding, but Loethen can’t believe his good fortune.
“The timing though couldn’t have been more perfect. It was really a gift from God how everything all fell into place,” he said.
Story by Shelley Gabert | photographs by Kris Wilson
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