This Olympic Marriage Proposal Is A Big Deal

As if you needed another excuse to shirk all responsibilities and watch the Olympics all day, every day, Brazilian rugby player Isadora Cerullo recently accepted an Olympic marriage proposal on the field where her team had competed in the first women's rugby sevens. In a move that wouldn't be out of place in the climactic scene of a Hollywood rom com, volunteer stadium manager Marjorie Enya proposed to her partner of two years following the medal ceremony in which Australia won gold. In lieu of a ring, she tied a ribbon around the athlete's finger. (And yes, Cerullo accepted. That goes without saying, right?)

"The Olympic Games can look like closure but, for me, it's starting a new life with someone," Enya told the BBC. Cerullo holds dual citizenship in the United States and Brazil, but she and Enya moved to Sao Paolo to focus on her rugby career prior to the Olympics. The Brazilian women's rugby team finished ninth in this year's games; in the match that took place right before Enya's proposal, Australia defeated New Zealand 24-17. (The United States came in fifth.)

"I wanted to show people that love wins," Enya added to the BBC, because you hadn't cried enough happy tears today.

It's fitting that the first Olympic proposal involves a same-sex couple: This year's Olympics are historic for the LGBTQ community, with a record number of athletes (at least 47) competing while out. Admittedly, this number tends to wax and wane depending on the host country's attitude toward LGBTQ rights; the 2014 Sochi games, which were marked by gay rights protests, featured just seven openly LGBTQ players. However, a number of athletes in the Rio Olympics are married or engaged to their same-sex partners, including WBNA star and player for Team USA's basketball team Elena Delle Donne, who quietly came out in a Vogue profile last week. Additionally, Great Britain's field hockey team features two married athletes, Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh, whose meet-cute is clearly the stuff of early-2000s rom com dreams.

Of course, this doesn't mean everything has gone off without a hitch — according to Reuters, some soccer players have complained of the crowd chanting homophobic insults during matches.

Cerullo and Enya can marry in the United States, where same-sex marriage was legalized last year, or Brazil, where it was legalized in 2013. Let's hope the whole world gets on the same page soon.