McCartney halts show for marriage proposal

Ben Okuly thought he was ready to propose to his girlfriend, but first he needed Sir Paul McCartney’s approval.

Okuly was attending one of former Beatle’s concerts in Detroit when he held up a sign that caught the McCartney’s eye: “Can Ben ask Melissa to marry him?”

During the concert last week, McCartney spotted it and read it out loud, The Detroit News reported today.

“Well, go on, get down on your knees and ask her, Ben!” Sir Paul ordered. Ben did, and Melissa said yes.

“Well, that’s a first for me,” McCartney quipped of the in-concert engagement. “And I hope it’s a last for you, Ben.”

Ben, a 26-year-old library employee, hatched the plan when he and his girlfriend, Melissa Steele, were driving from Ohio to the concert.

“I was trying to think of a way to do this and make it a memorable occasion, really special,” he said.

Later in the concert, McCartney even pointed to the couple to sing their own line of Hey Jude when he had different sections of the arena sing the song to him.

“To have Paul McCartney be there and start the proposal, I really don’t have words to describe what that was like,” Melissa, who works in a hospital emergency room, said.