Romance hit the airwaves of WGRE 91.5 FM when a male inmate from Putnamville Correction Facility proposed to his girlfriend over "Welcome to the Metal" in September.
An inmate had been calling into the show for many months. In September, the inmate wanted the disc jockeys, senior Carter Gorman and junior Jon-Mark Sabel, to propose to his girlfriend on air during their show.
"We read his proposal on air," Gorman said. "She called like 10 seconds after we got off the air and said yes. Then we came back on the air after one or two songs and said 'Oh she accepted...Congratulations.'"
More recently, the DJs received a letter from the inmate saying they would be wed on March 3.
"Last week [on air] we were saying 'Good luck to you guys on your ceremony and hope all goes well,' that kind of thing," Gorman said.
The inmate's fiancée called the night of the show, thanking the DJs for their help in the relationship.
"We're happy for the couple," said Michael McManis, sports director for WGRE. "They are getting married at the prison and then again, once [the man] gets out."
During the past few months it has been customary for the male inmate to send letters and his girlfriend to call-in to the Welcome to the Metal show, dedicating songs to each other such as Lamb of God's "Walk with Me in Hell" and Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."
This isn't the first time inmates at Putnamville have requested songs on "Welcome to the Metal". The show dates back to 2006 and has always been a huge hit at the prison. The DJs use pseudonyms as a precaution and only communicate with the inmates through snail-mail, which are read by the prison before they are sent and approved by PCCM/WGRE faculty before being forwarded to the DJs.
"Every piece of mail that comes in we make copies of and read before we give it to the DJs," said Chris Newton, WGRE operations coordinator.
The couple has acknowledged the burden it might cause to the DJs to be the medium with which the couple communicates, but Gorman doesn't mind.
"Sometimes [the woman] wonders how we receive their using us as an outlet for their relationship, thus being a conduit between the two," Gorman said. "We just say, 'we're fine with it.'"
Although this type of activity may seem strange to some students, the "Welcome to the Metal" DJs know this is normal for the show and see the good side of it.
"That's the only time [the inmates] can listen to metal," Gorman said. "We are their sole outlet for metal. I've always thought of it as a really good public service to people who aren't often given public service."
Newton stresses that the DJs need to be aware that the prison isn't their only audience and to make sure they aren't "stepping into stuff they don't understand [at the prison]."
"We try to make whoever is doing the heavy metal show aware of that it's more than just playing the music back when we've got a static population like that that uses this show to communicate within the prison," Newton said. "You need to be aware of what you're getting yourself into."