Correspondent photo / Amanda Smith Holly and Michael Guerrero of Howland will celebrate their 34th wedding anniversary later this month. Michael proposed to Holly with the quarter-page ad they are holding that ran in the Tribune Chronicle on June 22, 1991.

HOWLAND — Their romance began when she had a Tribune newsboy deliver her telephone number along with his family’s morning paper. Eight years later, he proposed with a quarter-page ad.

Holly and Michael Guerrero’s love story predates cellphones, dating apps and social media. It started in the mid-1980s, with a high school crush, a McDonald’s parking lot and a carefully planned assist from a newspaper carrier.

Holly, who is a year older than Michael, caught his attention while they were both students at Howland High School. Michael admitted he was intimidated and never worked up the nerve to ask her out. That changed one night when Holly drove past him with a friend and Michael shouted a question across the lot.

“When are we going out?” he called.

She answered with a tease.

“I told him my number was in the phone book,” Holly said.

Only it wasn’t. The number was unlisted.

Instead, Holly and her friend came up with a workaround.

Holly’s best friend’s brother delivered newspapers, and one morning, along with the Tribune, Michael received her handwritten phone number.

Soon after, Michael made the call.

Their first date was at Chi-Chi’s in Boardman. Holly remembers being nervous, struggling through an entree with stringy cheese and hoping she didn’t make a mess on a first impression. Michael remembers thinking it was worth the wait.

They dated for nearly eight years, through college at Youngstown State University and Kent State University at Trumbull, long commutes and early jobs. Friends teased Holly that Michael was taking too long.

He — and she — both knew that wasn’t the case.

“I was still living at home, I was still going to college, and I didn’t have a good job yet,” Michael said. “If you want to have a family, you’ve got to be able to support them and have your own place.”

Once Michael was hired at Packard Electric, he started ring shopping. But instead of a traditional proposal, he decided on something more personal.

The couple had a weekend ritual. Along with a Pillsbury toaster strudel, they read the newspaper together every morning.

So Michael went to the Tribune office and bought a quarter-page ad, with instructions to run the ad on a specific Saturday, which was June 22, 1991.

“I wanted something different,” he said. “Something we shared.”

The display ad addressed Holly by her nickname, “Sport,” a name Michael gave her because she was always a good sport about everything. The morning the ad ran, Michael unplugged the phones so no one could interrupt. He hid the ring in a sock drawer and waited.

Holly flipped through the paper with her coffee and toaster strudel until she saw it.

“Holly, Sport, will you marry me?” she read. “I looked up and he was already on one knee.”

She said yes before finishing the ad.

They were married less than a year later In February 1992 and are approaching their 34th wedding anniversary. Along the way came two children, careers, multiple moves for work and a life that stayed rooted in Howland even when jobs took them elsewhere.

Today, Michael is still working as an engineer, now with Aptiv, with retirement on the horizon. Holly works in the Howland schools. Their daughter lives in Minnesota, their son nearby in Warren, and both followed their parents to YSU.

Looking back, Holly said the proposal still stands out as one of the most unexpected moments of her life.

“It was perfect,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it at all.”

Michael said their son followed in the family tradition when devising a meaningful, heartfelt proposal. He met his fiancee while both were working summers at Cedar Point, maintaining a long-distance relationship for several years as she lived in Iowa. When it came time to propose, he planned it during a cross-country drive, stopping in a quiet park on the way to her hometown.

It was quieter than a quarter-page newspaper ad, but no less romantic.