On Halloween 2013, Joseph Ramos and Melissa Landin went on their first date. Eighteen months later the couple returned to one of the spots they visited that night, and Joe surprised Melissa with his own recreation of The Great Pumpkin Challenge. He also asked her a very important question.

Last Friday, passersby may have wondered why there was an unseasonal display of what looked like carved pumpkins in the front yard at 14 Main Street. For four years, high school student Mackenzie Page, who lives with her family at that address, has presented a display of carved pumpkins that are lit for Halloween. But carved pumpkins in April doesn’t make sense… unless passersby also happened to notice that these pumpkins carried a message with them.

Joe surprised his girlfriend with the display on April 24. With the pumpkins spelling out I LOVE YOU — one letter per pumpkin on one piece of scaffolding — and a second set of pumpkins spelling out WILL YOU MARRY ME? on a second piece, Joseph brought Melissa back to the spot where the couple began dating.

A financial analyst for a civil engineer construction company, Joe, 30, met Melissa, 29, in 2013 after they both tried using Tinder, a location-based dating app. Melissa, who is about to graduate from the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine, was actually supposed to be at a party that Joe was going to attend, at the urging of one of his friends who wanted Joe to meet her. She ended up missing that party, however, but the two found each other when they began using Tinder shortly after that missed opportunity.

First they communicated through the app. After they exchanged phone numbers, they began sending long texts to each other. Next it was e-mails, for nearly two weeks.

When Joe found out that Melissa was due to travel to New Orleans for a weekend in November, he suggested they finally meet in person before she left town.

“I didn’t want to wait another weekend,” he said April 29. “So I proposed we meet and hang out before she went away.”

While Melissa jokes that Joe was afraid she was going to go away and meet some cute Southern boy, her voice turns serious when she talks about the first time she and her now fiancé did meet.

“We both felt like the university was trying to get us together,” she said, smiling at Joe. “We felt like we already knew each other.”

Melissa’s family lives on Main Street, so Joe was introduced to the melee that is Halloween on Newtown’s Main Street, complete with displays by families and business owners, as well as what it is like for homeowners to handle giving candy away to a few thousand costumed guests.

“I was beyond surprised,” Joe told The Bee recently. He offered some of the couple’s backstory before he and Melissa sat down for their interview on April 29. “I was amazed at the lines of little children and their families waiting to get a piece of candy.”

Joe jumped right in, and started handing out candy to children who were visiting the Landins. He spent a few hours with Melissa, and her parents, an uncle, and even a cousin and some of her uncle’s friends.

“The funny thing was, I wasn’t at all overwhelmed,” he said. “They welcomed me into their house with open arms and put me right to work handing out candy.”

After spending a few hours giving out candy, Joe and Melissa went out on their date. They went to Figs in Sandy Hook for dinner, and then to My Place Restaurant for a drink.

“It was funny because while at My Place the bartender approached us and asks us if we were on our first date,” Joe recalled, saying it was “embarrassing but cute at the same time.”

Joe was also introduced that evening to The Great Pumpkin Challenge. Created and hosted by Mackenzie Page in 2011, the challenge begins with Mackenzie inviting donations of carved pumpkins, and a financial contribution for The Hole in The Wall Gang Camp. The challenge concludes with the display of pumpkins — ranging from just shy of 100 to nearly 175 creations — on rafters set up at her family’s Main Street home, just a few doors away from the Landins.

“After we left My Place, Melissa turned to me and said ‘I want to show you one more thing,’” Joe recalled. It was The Great Pumpkin Challenge.

“She has always teased me, saying I should have kissed her then,” said Joe. “She tells me that would have been a memorable first kiss.”

‘The Pumpkin House’

Joe one-upped Melissa last week, creating his own display at 14 Main Street. While Melissa’s parents and younger sister still live on Main Street, Melissa is currently living in West Hartford. Joe, a resident of Branford, wasn’t sure which house was “The Pumpkin House,” as he calls it, so in late March he quietly made a trip to town to start laying the groundwork for his marriage proposal.

He had to walk along Main Street for a little while to figure out which house was the one he needed, and was fortunate enough to meet Mackenzie Page’s brother and father that evening.

“It was the night of my prom, so I didn’t hear about this until the next morning,” Mackenzie said April 30. “He came wandering in, and asked if this was ‘the house that does the pumpkins.’ He told my dad about their first date, and seeing the pumpkins, and how he wanted to set up scaffolding, with pumpkins, to propose.

“My dad was like ‘Yes!’” Mackenzie said.

Meanwhile, Joe told Melissa that he was going to be attending a work conference last week. In order to get Melissa to Newtown without raising her suspicions, he told her that he had met “an industry bigwig,” he said.

“I told her this guy used to live in Newtown, and that his favorite place to eat was The Inn at Newtown,” he said this week. The inn is located diagonally across the street from the Page residence. “I also told her that he wanted to take us out to dinner, which was perfect.”

Joe said he also told Melissa that because they were going out with someone important, they had to dress up.

“I wanted us to both look nice for this,” he said.

“I believed it,” said Melissa. “Everything was so convincing.”

Meanwhile, Joe had already been to 14 Main Street the previous night. He and his brother George, and two friends — Jeff Caruso and Brian Coppolo — had been to the Pages’ to do a run-through on Thursday, April 23. This time, Mackenzie Page was able to watch everything.

“There were lots of e-mails between my mom and dad, and Joe, before last week,” she said, laughing. “He wanted it perfect. There was lots of planning.”

Instead of pumpkins, which are nearly impossible to find at this time of the year, Joe had to settle for spaghetti squash for his display.

“It’s perfect though,” Melissa said. “We both love to eat spaghetti squash, and they did look like pumpkins. It was all so perfect.”

Because the night was for Joe and Melissa, the Page family stayed inside while everything played out on Friday.

“Joe’s friends and brother arrived around 7 to set everything up, so we just checked with them to see how everything was going,” said Mackenzie. “It was going to happen around 8:30, so when it was time everyone hid. We came inside, and his friends hid behind trees.”

Joe and Melissa arrived at The Inn at 8:35. She was still completely unsuspecting of anything, she said.

“When he said something about going to take a selfie at the pumpkin house, though, I had a feeling he was up to something,” said Melissa. “As soon as we started crossing the street, I knew.”

“I could see in her face that she knew what was going on,” he said.

The two walked over to the Pages’, and one of Joe’s friends uncovered the upper row of carved squash, now illuminated from within by Christmas lights. Joe started talking, and Melissa admits she had a hard time focusing on what he was saying.

“It was magical,” she said. “I couldn’t believe this was really happening.”

When Joe’s friend uncovered the second set of pumpkins, the ones that asked Melissa to marry Joe, he knelt in front of her and presented her with a ring: a round classic solitaire that was exactly what she wanted.

“We watched from the dining room. It was really cute,” said Mackenzie. “I’ve never had something like this happen because of the pumpkins, or having to do with it. It’s exciting. It’s really cool that this really great thing could happen because of The Great Pumpkin Challenge.”

In addition to popping the question, Joe had arranged for a full weekend of surprises for Melissa. He did take her to dinner Friday night, to Viva Zapata in Westport, her favorite. There, she was given a cake for dessert decorated with the words “She Said Yes!” She was also given a pair of tickets to Saturday’s game between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets (he’s a Yankees fan, she likes the Mets).

On Sunday, she was surprised to meet not just her friend Nina for brunch — which is what she thought her plans were — but also a number of friends from high school, college, and dental school. Joe had arranged for seven of her friends to meet her, thinking that they were going to surprise her with an early graduation party.

Instead, said Melissa, she also caught her friends off guard.

“I walked in the door and saw everyone, so I thought it was an engagement party,” she said, laughing. “I held up my [left] hand and said ‘Here it is!’ and they were all like ‘Whaaaat?!’ So we surprised each other. It was hilarious.”

“We kind of knew right away that this was it, that we were going to be together,” said Melissa. They even began looking at rings last summer, but how and when the proposal would take place was always meant to be a surprise.

“It was one of the craziest first dates I’ve ever had,” Joe said recently. “I hope this will be my last first date.”

On Wednesday night of this week, as they shared their story and smiled at each other, it looks like Halloween 2013 was indeed the final first date for both of them.