After Sunday, the Brisbane couple left town bound by a promise to love each other for the rest of their lives.

“I saw Tony coming towards the finish line and I could hear the commentator calling out his name,” Tiffany said. “I went to give him a hug and there he was down on one knee.”

It’s a moment Tiffany is sure she will never forget.

The electric atmosphere of a roaring crowd behind them, her five-year-old daughter in her arms and the joy of her exhausted husband-to-be after his 16th Ironman, was almost all too much.

“It’s so nice to think he did this for me – and I had no idea.”

Tiffany was diagnosed with cancer on January 25.

During this very trying time in their lives the proposal had come as “a ray of sunshine on our year,” she said.

“It was very special and very romantic,” she said.  “We’ve never really had an anniversary date but we’ve always celebrated on the Ironman weekend. Now I guess we do.”