Whirlwind romance: Wichita weatherman pops the question in the shadow of a tornado
To say Tom Bedard and Raya Maday have a stormy relationship is a bit of an understatement.
And in their case, that’s a good thing.
The couple, both meteorologists for AccuWeather in Wichita, got engaged Saturday when Bedard popped the question as they watched their first tornado together.
“I had known that this was the year I had wanted to propose and was just trying to find the right scenario for it,” Bedard said. “Being that she and I still hadn’t seen a tornado and there was a whole lot of talk earlier in the season about it being a good tornado season, it seemed like the best kind of circumstance.”
It worked. She said yes.
“I can’t really have a better word for this, but it was absolutely unreal,” Maday said. “I didn’t expect it. I knew it was happening eventually, but I thought it was going to happen in July.”
She said she’d imagined being proposed to during a tornado, but forecast the chance as slim to none.
“The friends that we were with, I told them how unrealistic would it be if he proposed in front of a tornado,” she said. “I was just spitballing not really thinking that that was actually going to happen, just like a far-fetched idea, so the fact that it happened, it was breathtaking.”
To set up the unusual engagement event, Bedard enlisted the help of Rich Putnam, a close friend and experienced severe-storm forecaster at AccuWeather.
“I knew he could get us to the right place,” Bedard said. “All I had to do was be there and have a ring.”
The chances of finding a tornado Saturday weren’t really all that good, but the couple seldom has a free weekend because he’s a volunteer firefighter in Colwich and they both volunteer at an animal shelter.
Bedard decided to hope for the best and off they went, in their matching orange AccuWeather T-shirts, on a six-hour drive to southeast Colorado.
Friends who were in on the plan tagged along to record the event and Maday actually picked the final spot where the proposal occurred.
The weather cooperated for once.
“We had some fun driving around the canyons and found ourselves a good spot (to watch a passing storm),” Bedard said. “In about five minutes, the darn thing wrapped up into a big old wall cloud and produced a lovely cone tornado.”
It was an unusually slow-moving tornado, about 5-10 mph instead of the usual 30 mph or so. It lifted and dropped several times so they were able to get some nice celebratory engagement photos.
“It really allowed us to enjoy the moment,” Maday said.
Bedard said she’d been dropping hints lately that a proposal would be favorably received, so he was confident, but a little nervous.
“I still consider her well out of my league, so I think that it wouldn’t have been surprising if she’d said ‘Well hold on, let’s wait a little bit,’” he said.
Not much chance of that, she said. She confirmed she’d been dropping hints — for about the last year.
The couple met at a meteorology conference in New Orleans and started dating in 2016, about a year before either of them worked for AccuWeather.
“When she graduated college, I was leaving a job in Hoboken, N.J. and the company hired us both at the same time,” Bedard said.
At work, Maday handles weather warnings for clients across the country, including railroads and major auto manufacturers. Bedard is more involved with emergency-management aspects of the business.
“We’re both meteorologists, but she’s very much more of a forecaster than I am,” he said.
“He’s not wrong,” she said, laughing.
Contributing: Michael Stavola of The Eagle
This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
