It was a beautiful, quiet proposal in Yosemite. Then a photographer made them famous
The photo is of a man on one knee, proposing to the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. He’s holding her hand. There is nobody else in sight.
They’re out in the distance, on Taft Point, in Yosemite. The sun’s rays shine onto the couple during a special moment captured by a professional photographer from Michigan.
The photographer just happened to be a witness of the Oct. 6 proposal, and he didn’t even realize it until he went through the photos later on, according to FOX17.
Then, on Oct. 17, photographer Matt Dippel posted the unexpected photo he took to both Instagram and Facebook.
On Instagram, he called it a “truly magical moment” between two people who he did not know. On Facebook, he asked the people of the internet for their help.
“Help me find these two,” Dippel wrote. “I took this photo and would love for them to find it.”
The photo has since been shared on Facebook more than 20,000 times. That doesn’t include all the times it was shared by news outlets across the country, and even around the globe.
People didn’t know this couple, but they wanted to help find them. The comment section was flooded with heart emojis and people in awe of the beautiful, intimate moment in a national park.
“I’ve gotten a lot of people trying to help me find out who they are,” Dippel told CNN last week. “Honestly, the internet has done a lot of digging to try to find out who they are.”
On Oct. 27, Dippel posted an update to Facebook.
“I FOUND THEM,” he said just 10 days after posting the original photo. “Everyone meet, Charlie (Vo) and his fiance Melissa the happy happy couple that was out on the point in my Taft Point Proposal.”
In the post, Dippel revealed that this was actually not the first time Vo proposed to his fiancee.
“In short, I captured the second proposal, the more special and official one in Charlie’s words,” Dippel said.
Then, in a FaceTime interview with WOOD in Michigan, Vo revealed the meaning behind this “official” proposal. He told the TV station that he actually proposed to Melissa this February in Utah.
Vo posted a photo of that first engagement on Instagram.
“Since we’ve been together, you’ve enriched my life and brought me so much happiness,” he wrote on Instagram. “Everything that has happened since then makes me believe that we’re meant to be together, will you marry me?”
He added the hashtag, “#shesaidmmhmmm.”
The first proposal was with family around, FOX17 reported, but Vo wanted to do a “more personal” proposal, as well.
That’s why he planned another proposal for when they went hiking in Yosemite, according to WOOD. The couple lives in Los Angeles.
Vo told FOX17 that he found out about the photo of their second engagement from a local, California news site.
“I stumbled across our picture being posted and I was like ‘holy crap that’s us,’” he said, according to FOX17. “I read the caption and then I tracked down Matt and I reached out to him. But we were totally unaware of this entire thing. It was so shocking.”
This story was originally published October 28, 2018 at 4:19 PM.