What a whirlwind romance.
A couple got engaged in the midst of tornado cleanup in Powderly, Texas this week after finding the engagement ring they thought was lost forever.
Dakota Hudson and Lauren Patterson were devastated by the extreme storms, losing nearly all their belongings when a tornado struck their home. The engagement ring, unfortunately, was swept away.
“I told her, I was like, ‘I lost your engagement ring and your wedding band,’ and she told me it was alright,” Hudson told KXII. “All she needed was me.”
But a softball team came to the rescue.
Searching high and low for the glittering diamond, the Paris Junior College softball team hunted the property for the missing ring, sifting through the rubble in hopes of spotting it.
Miraculously, one teammate pulled out the ring from the debris, unearthing the sparking gem two inches underground and seven yards from its original hiding place.
“I was just kind of digging through the mud in this certain particular spot, and I kept digging there,” Kate Rainey, a team member, told KXII. “I don’t know why — I felt led to dig right there, and I found a little piece of a metal circle, and it was not metal. It was gold. I didn’t believe it. When I found it, I was like, ‘There’s no way I just found it.’”
As soon as the diamond was discovered, Hudson dropped to one knee to propose to Patterson because he “wasn’t going to wait anymore.”
“I couldn’t have asked for a better proposal,” Patterson told KXII, calling the moment “very surreal.”
Softball player Melaina Lopez captured footage of the shockingly sweet moment.
“It was truly one of the most remarkable things we have witnessed. Congrats to the newly engaged couple,” Lopez told Storyful.