As Ella Reck and Robby Ratajczak sat together on a picnic blanket near the lighthouse at Chandler Hovey Park last Saturday evening it looked like a simple sunset picnic. The couple gazed across Marblehead Harbor and watched the waves roll in, celebrating their second dating anniversary in the same place where they went on their very first date.
I went up to them and asked if I could take their picture for the Current. As the shutter clicked, Ratajczak got down on one knee, pulled a ring from his pocket and asked Reck to marry him. For a moment, she was frozen in surprise and overcome with emotion, before she embraced him.
The couple, who live in Andover, had first met exactly two years before, when they went on their first date — a picnic in the same exact spot. Coincidentally that afternoon was one of my first assignments for the Current, photographing people enjoying the warm summer weather. I photographed the couple as they sat for a picnic together overlooking the water.
“We’ve always cherished the fact that our first date was captured in the newspaper,” said Ratajczak. “So when she proposed the idea of coming back for our anniversary and having a picnic, I figured it would be the best time to do it.”
Ahead of their second anniversary, Ratajczak reached out to the Current with an idea to recreate the moment before he surprised Ella with a proposal, returning them to where their relationship began and creating a new memory.
It was an honor to be a part of their big moment and be able to capture both the beginning of their adventure, and the start of the next chapter.
