By Riya Chinni
When Brad Rider dropped to one knee to re-propose to Wendy Albrecht, he had no idea that photographer Tyler Huffman would capture the moment or that Huffman’s photo and their story would go viral.
Rider and Albrecht started dating in October 2011.
On their one-year anniversary, Rider proposed to Albrecht on the roof of the J.W. Marriott in Indianapolis and the couple became engaged.
“As life happens, things get in the way and we never set a date, we never got married,” Rider said.
On the Fourth of July however, Rider said he wanted to remind Albrecht about how much he loves her and that he still wanted to get married.
“It was a beautiful evening,” Rider said. “We were walking down the Monon hand in hand and I saw the fireworks going off and all of our friends had walked in front of us so I just stopped and dropped to one knee to say ‘I still love you, will you still marry me?’”
“It was so innocent,” Albrecht said of the moment. “I know it was blown out of proportion, but it was just a moment that we had.”
Though a spontaneous moment for the couple, Huffman captured it while taking photos of fireworks.
Huffman made a last-minute decision to grab his camera to get a few shots that evening. Later that night while Huffman looked through photos, he realized he captured the moment and posted the photo on Carmel social media pages, trying to find the couple.
The photo went viral, and he found the couple close by: 10 doors down in his apartment building.
“I thought this was great,” Huffman said. “I thought it would just reach the couple since I figured they were Carmel residents, and I figured that was about as far as it would go.”
