Springsteen helped Barry Bloom talk to a girl at Monday's show, in a manner of speaking. Bloom brought a sign bearing the words "Nellie, Wanna Marry Me" and handed it up on stage when Springsteen went through the crowd seeking song suggestions.
"Am I right? Do we have a proposal here?" Springsteen asked. Bloom got down on one knee, and his girlfriend of four years, Nellie Bogart, said yes while the band kicked into "I Wanna Marry You" from The River.
It hardly mattered that Bloom, 42, had already proposed to Bogart, 44, a few months before. The Old Bridge, N.J., couple had both been married before, and Bloom's friends didn't believe him when he said he was ready to do it again after his first marriage didn't work.
"I figured if I did something public like this, maybe they'd believe me. It wasn't really meant to be a surprise for her. It was meant to be a statement of my intention and commitment," Bloom said yesterday.
He sounded more than a little like the character in that song:
They say in the end true love prevails
But in the end true love can't be no fairytale
To say I'll make your dreams come true would be wrong
But maybe, darlin', I could help them along.
Bogart has two children, just like the woman in the Springsteen song. Coincidence? You decide.
They will dance to "I Wanna Marry You" at their wedding.
Mooney's husband was terminally ill when she went back to school at Rutgers University in the 1970s to get her bachelor's degree in social work. Stan Mooney died in 1977 of heart and liver problems at 51.
Her daughter Jan Mooney died in a car accident in 1975 at 21. And then, in 1982, a car accident took her son, Eugene Davis Mooney, whom they called Dave, at age 25.
Jeanne's daughter Donna, who bought the tickets for Monday for her mother's birthday, said Springsteen looks like Dave, which may fuel her mother's love for the artist.
After years of raising six children, Jeanne Mooney finally got around to seeing Springsteen a few years ago when his tour was a tribute to Pete Seeger.
"I had to see him before he died," she said. Her favorite song is "Dancing in the Dark," though she's also partial to "The Rising," a meditation on the losses of 9/11.
"I don't think he's written a song that you aren't caught up in," Jeanne Mooney said. "I hope he's still playing into his 80s."
Contact staff writer Miriam Hill
at 215-854-5520 or hillmb@phillynews.com.
