Boston Marathon bombing survivor Roseann Sdoia, of Boston, smiles as she talks with her physical therapist at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in 2013. Photo / AP
Boston Marathon bombing survivor Roseann Sdoia, of Boston, smiles as she talks with her physical therapist at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in 2013. Photo / AP
A Boston Marathon bombing survivor who lost a leg in the terror attack is to marry the firefighter who saved her life.
Roseann Sdoia, a Boston native and keen runner who had gone to cheer on people taking part in the city's marathon, had been standing close to where the second bomb exploded at the finishing line of the race in 2013.
Roseann Sdoia when she left the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston in 2013. Photo / AP
After the bombs went off firefighter Mike Materia who she calls her "guardian angel" used a belt as a make-shift tourniquet for her badly injured leg and held her hand as she was rushed to hospital.
Love blossomed and last month he proposed while the pair were on vacation in Nantucket after he put a special engraved dog tag on their dog Sal, saying "Mike wants to know ... If you'll marry him."
Roseann told the New York Post: "Sal means so much to both of us. It couldn't have been more romantic."
Roseann, 48, told how her mum helped play matchmaker after Mike, 37, visited her in intensive care Boston General Hospital, where she had most of her right leg amputated, in the days after the attack.
Mike Materia supported Roseann in the immediate aftermath of the bombing and in the months that followed. Photo / AP
"In the hospital, my mum tried to set me up with him," Roseann said.
"She was like, 'Oh, did you see that firefighter? He's so cute." And I was like, "Mum, I just got blown up."
She said Mike had stayed with her after the blast went off and accompanied her to the hospital.
"I asked him if I was going to die. And he told me that I was going to be OK, that I only had a flesh wound," she told the Post.
The couple pictured in a Facebook post when Mike received a commendation.
As she undertook rehabilitation, romance blossomed as he was there to support her and even helped her track down a prosthetist to get her a prosthetic leg. They went on their first date in June 2013.
But she admits that she was "probably not the nicest to him from the get-go".
She said: "I was in pain. But now we laugh and blame it on the morphine," she said.
She added: "I knew I was starting to have feelings for him because he was so kind and caring," she said. "And he has an unbelievable smile."
They now plan to marry later this year in a small and intimate wedding.
But as well as planning their nuptials as well as raising money for the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
They also have a book in the works called Perfect Strangers about four lives that intersected during the marathon bombing. It is due to be released in March.
