When a stranger filmed Jillian Anderson’s engagement, she asked the internet to track the video down — and it worked.
Anderson’s now-fiancé, Chris Telfair, proposed in Central Park this past October during a trip to New York. The Colorado native remembers feeling overjoyed and surprised in the moment.
“I had my suspicions, but it was a total surprise,” Anderson tells TODAY.com.
It was only when she looked back at the video of her engagement that she noticed a woman in a boat recording her and her now fiancé from another angle.
She knew she had to get the footage. But who was this stranger in a city of 8 million, and how would she find her?
Anderson decided to take to social media to track down the mystery woman in the boat.
“I posted it, and it went crazy viral that day, which was insane. I didn’t think it would get that much attention,” she says.
The video garnered over 15 million views and 2 million likes within hours of being posted. Strangers on the internet became invested in trying to help Anderson find the woman in the boat.
“I think it took like two days and people kept looking through Central Park engagements and tagging me in all these videos,” she says.
Finally, Anderson received a private message on TikTok from someone who recognized the woman on the boat. She connected Anderson with DulceMaría Rivera, a tourist visiting the city from Mexico to celebrate her anniversary with her boyfriend.
Rivera and her boyfriend struggling to get the boat moving in Central Park's Lake when they noticed the proposal.
“I immediately started recording while we tried to move, thinking we would ruin the scene, which was a total failure,” Rivera wrote in a statement to TODAY.com. “We couldn’t get it right fast enough. He and I commented on how beautiful a proposal it was, like something out of a movie.”
Rivera returned home to Mexico and uploaded the video to her own social media pages. Then, she started getting comments tagging her in Anderson’s video.
“When I found out, I immediately told (Anderson) I had it, she got in touch, and I sent her the video. After that, more and more people told me they were looking for me, and that’s how the video was all over the place, even in Mexico.”
Anderson posted the “boat girl POV” to TikTok, and viewers were so happy to see that she had found the girl in the boat.
The couple plans to get married in Italy in 2027.
Anderson, who says she’s difficult to surprise, applauds Telfair for pulling off a proposal that caught her off guard and led to its own adventure.
The two work for the same marketing agency. On the day of the proposal, Anderson thought she and Telfair were shooting lifestyle content for a brand, portraying a newly engaged couple.
After going through a few locations, they finally arrived at a Central Park vista. Anderson took off her coat to pose for a picture, and Telfair asked a bystander for a photo.
“He asked a random girl sitting on the bench of she could take a photo of both of us, which was very out of character for him, because he would never ask a stranger to take a photo,” Anderson says.
“As she had the phone, she tried to position us to center us, and then all of a sudden he turned to me and that’s when he got down on one knee and started proposing.”
