SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
After months of isolation, many couples are making big decisions about their future - whether to split up or maybe even get engaged. Some evidence suggests how people are leaning. Sriya Karumanchi works for Catbird, a jewelry brand based in New York. It's reporting a surge in business.
SRIYA KARUMANCHI: We were seeing on average 130 appointments booked a month, and in the last 90 days, we're closer to 250, 260.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Catbird's creative director, Leigh Plessner, thinks people want to catch up on all the big events they've missed.
LEIGH PLESSNER: There's a lot of celebrating happening, and then there's a lot of forward thinking happening. And perhaps that runway from engagement to wedding is happening again, where people are really savoring each step and thinking about having a wedding cake with other people and going dress shopping with other people.
PFEIFFER: Alex Miller proposed to Theresa Agonia last Tuesday on Cape Cod. She'd gotten off work late, and they took their dog to the beach. The sky glowed orange and gold.
THERESA AGONIA: I actually just happened to get up to take a photo because I thought it was so beautiful. And I just turned around, and Alex was on one knee and popped the question.
INSKEEP: Alex had been planning that moment for months. The couple had been long distance until they moved in together in Providence, R.I., right before the pandemic.
ALEX MILLER: I did really sort of push any serious planning I had about asking Theresa to marry me to a time when the pandemic was in a better place and the U.S. sort of had things more under control.
PFEIFFER: And that gave him plenty of time to design the ring.
MILLER: A yellow gold band with a half micro pave diamonds and then an oval cut for the diamond itself. I just felt that that would look really beautiful on Theresa's hand.
AGONIA: It's perfect. It's perfect. I wouldn't change a thing about it.
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