World falls in love with old couple on subway. World doesn’t know they got ‘busted’
An elderly couple having a private moment on the New York City subway a few days ago became famous, and it’s become clear that viral attention is not something either one ever wished for.
Blake Ricker, a nurse at Sloan Kettering, was on the Brooklyn-bound 1 train at Times Square, he told the New York Post, when Marilyn and Lester Dimit, sitting on the seats across from him, caught his eye.
The octogenarians looked so in love, snuggled close to each other, her head resting against his. He wore an impish grin. Eyes shut, she looked like she was ready for some sleep.
They held hands.
“The more you kept looking at them, the more you could see how in love that they were with each other,” Ricker, a 32-year-old single guy, told CBS News on Thursday. “It was a special moment.”
He took their picture on his iPhone.
His friends encouraged him to post the photo on his social media pages so he could find the couple and give them a copy. So he did.
He tweeted: “If anyone recognizes this sweet couple, please let me know. I’d love to send them a copy of this picture for them to have. Unfortunately my stop came and I was unable to send them it.”
Hundreds of people who saw his tweet and posts on social media saw what he saw, and very quickly the old couple on the train went viral.
Thousands of likes. Thousands of retweets. Thousands of shares. Hundreds of heart emojis.
A few wondered whether he had invaded the couple’s privacy.
“Why not take the opportunity, to show something positive?” Ricker told CBS. “Helping brighten someone else’s day really motivated me to hopefully meet them and give them the picture.”
He found out who they are when an artist named Karen Kettering Dimit left him a note on Instagram.
“They are my in-laws, married 64 years, and this photo captures their relationship perfectly,” she wrote, according to the Post.
She told him that earlier in the evening the couple had dined with a friend, then watched a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” at Lincoln Center.
Her in-laws, she wrote, are determined to “live NYC life to the fullest,” which includes riding the subway - “which they have been admonished not to do any more, but your photo BUSTED THEM!”
She told Ricker her in-laws are private people and don’t want any more “publicity.”
Actually, her exact words were, according to Gothamist: “They are HATING the publicity.”
“They are extremely private, and not wanting to engage. Probably too late ... but let your amazing photo be the story if possible! People can project their own fantasies into it.”
Ricker, though, is undeterred, still hoping to get the photo to them. He told CBS he wants to meet them someday.
“The more I saw the couple interacting with each other the more I could tell how in love they were,” he said.. “It was honestly one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen.”