Dale Earnhardt Jr., who proposed to girlfriend Amy Reimann last week while vacationing in Germany, said he looks forward to the day they have children.
“You want to have children,’' Earnhardt said Friday at Sonoma Raceway. “I think the greatest accomplishment in life is to be able to raise a child. That would be awesome. I’ve felt that way for a long time. It’s a timing thing. You’ve got to get married first and find that person you want to spend the rest of your life with.
“That’s definitely in the future. She wants to have kids. I’ve always kind of wanted to have kids. That’s definitely something we’ll be looking at.’'
Friday was the first time Earnhardt had talked to the media since proposing to Reimann. Earnhardt explained how long he had been planning the proposal.
“I had been planning on it for several months,’' he said. “I was hoping for years that Amy and I would get married. It just seemed like over the last year it made more sense to me, the timing was right.’'
Earnhardt proposed to her in a Lutheran church in Germany where Earnhardt’s family had attended generations ago.
“I picked that particular spot because I wanted her to feel special,’' Earnhardt said. “We had talked about this trip for a while. She kind of knew how important the trip was. To do it at that particular time, that moment in that church may make the moment more memorable for her.
“I thought it was just a great place to do it. Every other spot I could think of just didn’t measure up. Just wasn’t good enough, especially for her. She was blown away. She certainly didn’t have an idea that was going to happen.”
Earnhardt also was asked if everything went as planned.
“My sister was asking me what I was going to say, and I told her that I didn’t have any idea, I was just going to go for it,’' Earnhardt said. “I didn’t want to set it up to where it was cheesy. I wanted it to be natural and impromptu.’'