After Hernandez posted the TikTok, Venmo payments started flooding Slobodzian’s account. — AP
A delivery driver’s wedding wish came true in Arizona after a woman ordered Chipotle and found the note he’d left taped to the bag.
Erica Hernandez ordered Chipotle in Phoenix and found Paul Slobodzian’s handwritten note that explained he was working for the delivery service to help give his fiancee the “wedding she deserves,” leaving his Venmo handle for any tips, the June 22 TikTok that’s garnered over 33 million views as of June 26 showed.
Slobodzian and his soon-to-be wife, Aly Perkins, got engaged in September, but they’d started to save up for their wedding before the engagement, Perkins told McClatchy News in a phone interview.
The pair met in 2017 when they were sophomores in college before becoming a couple in 2018, Slobodzian said in a June 23 TikTok.
“We have been by each other’s side every step of the way, through the highs and lows,” he said in the TikTok that’s garnered over 3.6 million views as of June 26. “She is my rock. I love her with everything in my heart. She completes me, and I’m so so grateful to have her in my life.”
The two “knew it was going to take time to save for the wedding,” so they started driving for a food delivery service while also working their day jobs.
“Our wedding is on September 21st and driving became our baby,” she said. “We’d been driving since March 2023.”
After Hernandez posted the TikTok, Venmo payments started flooding Slobodzian’s account.
“We started getting Venmoes and someone was kind enough to link the TikTok in the description,” Perkins said. “We were like ‘Oh, that’s where it’s coming from.’”
The two had been driving 25 hours a week each, for 15 months, before Hernandez’s video captured the hearts of TikTok users.
“We had about six weeks left, and now we’ve been able to stop driving,” she said.
But Perkins said “the true gift” is that the couple got “300 hours back to spend time together.”
“This video happened to find the best part of humanity, truly,” she said. “Millions of people rooting for our love is really profound. People are wishing us 100 years of marriage, and it’s such an outpouring of support for love in general.”
Now that they don’t have to drive, Perkins said the two are “adjusting to this new free time and figuring out how they want to spend it together,” whether that’s cooking or reading together.
“We were ready to see this through to the end and stare down another Arizona summer so the fact that the goal was made overnight was just crazy,” she said.
Perkins said the couple is so thankful to Hernandez.
“She is just a regular person too, and all the love she is getting is so deserved,” she said.
The couple even invited Hernandez to their wedding, and she is planning to attend.
“We’ve been communicating throughout all this. I hope it becomes a lifelong friendship,” she said. “Anyone who’s willing to advocate for two people they don’t know is a nice, genuine person.”
TikTok users rushed to the comments to share how the story is “such a cute corner of the internet.”
“This is the coolest thing to happen on social media in a long time,” one person said.
“The mass of internet strangers is incredible when they want to be. Happiest congratulations!” another wrote.
“These are the things that restore my faith in the good this world has,” someone commented. – The Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service
