How Golden Tate is giving back to veterans

As the Lions prepared to play the Jaguars on Sunday, Golden Tate and his fiancee, Elise Pollard, had another assignment.

They were helping Nik Schieder, a veteran, get engaged to his longtime girlfriend Sheena Lader.

First, came the cover story. Pollard hosted the couple in Tate's suite during the game and told Lader that Schieder was going to be honored during the game as part of the NFL's Salute to Service month.

"From the second they walked into the suite, Nik was shaking," Pollard said. "Sheena was uncomfortable so I was trying to get a read on her, trying to figure out does she know, is she super nervous … Luckily my whole family is there and they're really outgoing so they kind of helped everyone ease into everything."

Schieder enlisted in the Army in 2001 and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan five times before being honorably discharged with a Purple Heart in 2012. Their story came to Pollard and Tate from a friend who had gotten engaged in a similar fashion through their foundation the year before. Sunday's proposal was the third time that Tate's foundation has partnered up with the diamond company Ritani to help veterans pull off a dream proposal.

Schieder said he had more than a few reasons to be a little nervous.

"It was my first football game, ever. I've always been watching football but I've actually made it to a game," Schieder said. "So it was fantastic to be at a game and then to be in a suite. And then to meet Elise, she's such a fantastic individual. So I was nervous for so many different reasons, so I think that kind of helps to sell the surprise. I think it's a week I won't soon forget."

During the first quarter, the couple was escorted down to the tunnel that the team walks through to go out to the game. Pollard said she was just trying to continue to make small talk with them to try to keep the secret under wraps for just a few more minutes.

"And it went off without a hitch," she said. "It was just perfect … she had no idea, she thought the cameras were going to come on him and he was going to wave and the announcers were going to talk about his service and little did she know that he got down on one knee."

Tate was playing in the game during the actual moment that the proposal happened, but said he saw the moment when it was being replayed as he was coming out from halftime.

"You could definitely see the emotion on the screen, you could see Sheena how excited she was and how happy she was so that was really cool," he said. "… It was super cool to be part of that and give back the way we did."

Pollard had a relationship with Ritani through her job at an IT consulting firm. After Ritani's president Joel Klein saw her engagement to Tate last year he reached out to see if there was any way they could help a military member have the same sort of storybook engagement. The couple went through veteran organizations and met with veteran groups to find couples who could use help getting married.

"It's always just a really cool story," Pollard said. "The veterans are so blown away. When I was first talking to Nik, he got pretty choked up on the phone and he said 'I never expected this to happen to me. I'm just really blown away.'"

And that moment he was on the field? Schieder said he doesn't remember it quite as well as he'd like to - the whole experience was just a bit overwhelming and he was just waiting to hear her say 'yes'.

"It's a word I've wanted to hear now for three years but we just never had the means," he said. "We're both students, we both try to be as modest and shy away from public stuff as possible because we like to earn our due and do our thing. It was uncharacteristic for us but it was a fantastic experience."