Andrew Kurka poses with Veronica Quezada after their engagement in Punta Mita, Mexico. Photo courtesy of Andrew Kurka.
You never know what you might find walking along the beach in Mexico. For Paralympian Andrew Kurka, it was a yes to his proposal.
The alpine skiing gold medalist announced his engagement to girlfriend Verónica Quezada Friday on Instagram along with some pictures of the smiling couple and, of course, the engagement ring. Kurka said he proposed with a message in a bottle on the beach while the pair was snorkeling in Punta Mita, Mexico.
“Today we found a message in a bottle on a beach…it had a ring in it,” Kurka wrote. “That was pretty cool.”
Kurka, 29, has a lot to celebrate these days as he recently was named to the U.S. Para Alpine Skiing National Team for the 11th consecutive year. He’ll soon be training in earnest to make a third consecutive Paralympic Games. A training run crash cut his first Games short in 2014, but he won a downhill sitting gold medal four years later in PyeongChang and added a silver in super-G. Kurka was also the 2017 downhill world champion and has four career world championship medals.
While Kurka now has a wedding to plan, that may just have to wait until after a busy winter that’s going to include a more typical world cup calendar, the world championships in January and of course the Beijing Games in March. Kurka appears to be enjoying the ride.
“This makes 11 years and counting with TeamUSA,” he wrote on Instagram on Sept. 28, “and Beijing2022 is just around the corner.”