How retiring Glen Ellyn jewelers help clients pop the question

Some fellas just need a little nudge.

They start imagining what could go wrong. A cramp in their bended knee. Their girlfriend gets a sixth sense about the little box in their pocket. Or worse, she squints at the rock.

Janet Malopy knows exactly what to do with the second-guesser.

She models the ring herself and delivers a zinger.

"I'll say, 'Look at the ring'," she said. "'Don't look at the wrinkles.'"

Her customer usually laughs and then, now at ease, can begin planning the proposal.

"We have a lot of fun. We've never been stuffy," Malopy said. "We've never been pushy. I don't think we've ever steered anybody in the wrong direction."

After 35 years in the business, Malopy and her husband, Greg, are retiring and closing their store, Riviera Jewelers, in downtown Glen Ellyn.

Malopy, a self-taught jewelry designer, caters to the big occasions. And when a client is about to get engaged, Malopy doesn't launch into a discussion, as Marilyn Monroe would say, on square cuts or pear shapes.

She starts by asking about their significant other. She likes to see pictures and aims to understand their taste.

"My goal was to give people the best that I can as far as style, as far as creativity for their personality," said Malopy, tapping the counter to make her point.

It's that personal attention that gets the Malopys invited to weddings. And when customers see the final product?

"Some people have been in tears," Greg Malopy said. "Some people are going, 'Oh My God.' And some people - I can't say what they say. They're just amazed how we can take it from a little sketch and turn it into a regular ring."

And some clients are either allergic to romance or so comfortable with Malopy that they ask for some help popping the question.

Malopy happily agrees, and they "sit down and come up with a lot of different ideas."

"Don't go with the just putting it on a teddy bear," she said. "Be a little more creative."

She considers her clients close friends who not only compliment her work but share the reactions to their gifts.

In one near-debacle, a wife bought a ring for her husband, and on their anniversary, dropped it in a glass of champagne.

The unsuspecting husband takes a sip, and then drinks some more, until the wife yelled, "Stop!"

"She didn't want him choking on his gift," Malopy said.

About 15 years into their business, Malopy began to doubt herself.

"I was thinking one day, I wonder if they don't think that I'm professional because I joke so much," she said. "I don't want them to get the wrong impression."

So she decided to be more reserved, cordial, polite.

"It lasted five days and then, I forgot, but then what I found, which was very interesting, customers would come in and say to me, 'Gee, Jan, what was the matter with you?' ... You were just not yourself.'"

Walk into her store, and it doesn't feel frilly or cold. The Beatles and Jimmy Buffett play softly in the background. Cartoons cut out by Malopy poke fun at a man clueless about carats. Husband and wife banter.

"She's got a birthday coming up that will remain numberless," Greg Malopy teased.

"Thank you," Janet Malopy politely replied.

They lease the Main Street storefront, and there are no immediate plans for another business to move in, said Staci Hulseberg, the village's planning and development director.

In retirement, the Malopys want to travel and enjoy some leisure time after a career spent working six days a week, taking only Sundays off.

They haven't settled on a closing date, "whenever everything is gone" after a retirement sale, Malopy said. She focuses on the jobs she has left: converting a mom's earrings - one each for her two children - into an engagement ring for the son who will propose to his girlfriend. But when she does picture the last day, tears fill her eyes.

"All good things must come to end, I guess," her husband said.