Everything was going wrong on the night Keith Cordes planned to ask Stephanie Leonardi to marry him at the LuminoCity holiday light show at Eisenhower Park in December.
First, Leonardi got in a fender bender on the way to meet him.
Then, it started to pour so hard that LuminoCity officials decided to close early, and the director had to be persuaded to keep the venue open long enough for Cordes to pop the question under the lighted arch.
But at least one thing went off without a hitch — Cordes’ parents and Leonardi's parents were there in the wings, tracking the couple on a location app, waiting to immediately congratulate them and break open a bottle of champagne together.
The families of Keith Cordes and Stephanie Leonardi, of Setauket, joined them when they got engaged in December 2023 at the LuminoCity holiday light show in Eisenhower Park. Credit: Kyle Preiser
Having immediate family members participate in the engagement event is a generational trend, say recently engaged couples from Long Island. “I’m very close with my family. For them not to be a part of it seems silly,” says Leonardi, 31, a creative design manager from Setauket. Cordes, 32, an emergency medical technician, is close with his family as well.
The shift surprises some parents who have been asked to take part in, if not the actual moment of proposal, the celebration immediately afterward. “When I got engaged, I definitely did not think about inviting my parents. It was not even a thought,” says Karen Pompay, 54, of Amityville, who was part of her son John’s engagement in August 2023 at the Montauk Lighthouse; fiancee Olivia’s parents flew in for it from suburban Columbus, Ohio.
Newly engaged couples say their parents have been so involved in their lives that it makes sense to share the experience with them and that social media and technology, in part, has made including family in such milestone experiences seem de rigueur.
Here is how four Long Island couples included their families — and even friends — in their proposal days, and why:
John Pompay and Olivia Turk

Their love story
- ENGAGED August 2023 at Montauk Lighthouse
- WHO ATTENDED Pompay’s parents and two siblings from Amityville, and Turk’s parents, who flew in from Dublin, Ohio. Pompay grew up in Garden City; the couple met on Hinge and live in Brooklyn.
- WEDDING Sept. 19, 2025, in Columbus, Ohio
John Pompay and Olivia Turk say that they see marriage as the blending of two families. So when they decided to be married in Ohio and get engaged on Long Island, the couple wanted to be sure her family members could be at the engagement together with Pompay’s. “I couldn’t really picture the day just being the two of us,” says Turk, 26, a law student at New York University.
Turk says modern technology has contributed to the shift in how couples get engaged today. “Even though we don’t live with our families anymore, we’re constantly in communication with them, whether FaceTime or texting,” Turk says. “It honestly just seemed like such a natural thing to invite them.”

John Pompay and Olivia Turk invited both of their families to be part of their engagement at Montauk Lighthouse in August 2023. Credit: Lisa Nicolosi Photography
So, they planned an extended family vacation weekend in Montauk, which, of course, gave away to Turk that something was afoot. “Everybody kind of knew what was happening,” says Pompay, 27, a law student at Harvard University. That was fine with Turk, she says. “I don’t like surprises in the slightest,” she says.
The couple chose to be engaged with the Montauk Lighthouse in the background and loved the photos so much they used them for the invitations to their Sept. 19 wedding.
Right after Pompay proposed, the couple invited waiting family members to join them for photographs in a picnic ground on a cliff with views of the water and lighthouse. Then, the families went for dinner at Gurney’s.
“I wasn’t expecting that we would be invited,” says Olivia's mother, Rachel Turk, 54, a teacher. “I was really surprised and really happy. I didn’t even know that it was like a thing that this generation did.”
Jacob Silverman and Stefanie Alpert

Their love story
- ENGAGED Thanksgiving Day, 2024, in Sun Valley, Idaho
- WHO ATTENDED Silverman’s parents, Alpert’s parents and all of their siblings flew from New York for Thanksgiving weekend. Silverman and Alpert, who live in Manhattan, grew up in Dix Hills and Huntington respectively, met in eighth grade, went to senior prom together and then reconnected after graduating from college.
- WEDDING Not yet set
Jacob Silverman had wanted to ask Stefanie Alpert’s parents for their blessing in asking their daughter to marry him, but with the couple having location tracking apps on each other’s cellphones, he had to find a way to get there without Alpert seeing.
The perfect time was while Alpert, 28, a commercial interior designer, was at a wedding in Spain, so he could do it while she was sleeping because of the time difference. Silverman, 28, an accountant, had dinner with the Alperts and told them the couple wanted both their families there whenever he proposed. “Her favorite place in the world is Idaho,” Silverman says, where Alpert's family has a vacation condo. “Her mom came up with the idea that we do it there for Thanksgiving.”
From there, the subterfuge began, a scheme to get 11 people to Sun Valley, Idaho, for the holiday weekend. “The amount of lies and deception was insane. My mom, she was a master actress,” Stefanie says. Various family members pretended they couldn’t make it, including Silverman himself. Jokes Alpert: “We actually got into a big fight.”

Jacob Silverman and Stefanie Alpert, right, had their immediate family members fly to Idaho to be part of their engagement over Thanksgiving weekend in 2024. Credit: Karen Alpert
Alpert’s mother, Karen, 62, who owns hot yoga studios, had to get involved in the planning because Silverman had never been to Sun Valley. “That’s a lot of pressure for me,” Karen says. “What if I messed up my own daughter’s engagement?” On the day before Thanksgiving, Karen took Silverman out with her “to do errands” but actually to scout out the proposal spot where a photographer would be hiding.
On Thanksgiving morning, the couple ostensibly was supposed to meet a family friend at a local golf club. When Stefanie came downstairs to leave with her hair still wet and no makeup on, “I knew she didn’t know,” Silverman says. When they arrived but the friend texted that he was running late, Silverman suggested the couple take a walk. There, in front of the mountains, he got down on one knee.
When they arrived back at the Alperts’ condo, the family members were all there for Thanksgiving dinner — including Jacob’s brother, Ben, and sister-in-law, Kait, who Stefanie had been told were not going to be able to make it as part of the plot to keep her in the dark. “They gave us a round of applause,” Silverman says.
And of course, the family members were thrilled to be included, says Silverman’s mother, Hope, 59, an ice skating instructor. “We all went out on the balcony and took a family picture. My friend saw it and said, ‘This looks like a Hallmark movie.’”
Keith Cordes and Stephanie Leonardi

Their love story
- ENGAGED Dec. 18, 2024, at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow
- WHO ATTENDED Cordes’ parents from South Setauket, Leonardi’s parents from Port Jefferson Station, and Leonardi’s sister and brother-in-law, Jenna and Stephen Zambito, of Sayville. The couple met in eighth grade math class, were high school sweethearts, and have been together for 18 years.
- WEDDING Not yet set, their first priority is buying a house, they say.
It was a good thing that Keith Cordes involved his parents and future in-laws in his proposal plan, because they were already at the LuminoCity light show when the venue made the decision to close early due to the weather. Cordes’ father sought out the director of the show and told him they couldn’t close, that his son was on his way with his girlfriend to propose.
LuminoCity stayed open just for them. “I’m not going to blow up an engagement,” LuminoCity project manager John Baiata says. “It’s very romantic.”
The couple strolled through the exhibit until they arrived at a tunnel of white lights; Cordes had brought clear umbrellas in case they were needed. “We had that one-on-one special moment when he got on one knee,” says Leonardi.
Immediately after, their family members emerged from hiding, clapping and screaming.
Says Cordes’ mother, Pamela, 52, a business owner from Stony Brook: “The generation now are just doing things differently, changing things up a little bit. Good for them.”
In the end, the rain actually made their engagement photos better, Cordes says, because of the reflection from the water and lights. And, they could wander the show without crowds. “We ended up closing the light show down; it was only us,” Leonardi says. Baiata, the LuminoCity manager, even joined the family in the parking lot afterward for a champagne toast.
Alex Breuer and Erica Katz

Their love story
- ENGAGED April 28, 2024, at Brooklyn Bridge Park
- WHO ATTENDED Breuer’s parents drove down from Boxborough, Mass., Katz’s parents drove in from her childhood home in Stony Brook, and friends and extended family members also joined them. Katz and Breuer, who live in Brooklyn, met in 2013 when both were teaching English in Israel.
- WEDDING Sept. 27, 2025, at The Boat House on Shelter Island
Erica Katz thought she and Alex Breuer were meeting her sister-in-law and nephew at Brooklyn Bridge Park until Breuer led Katz to the waterfront in the shadow of the bridge and got down on one knee.
At that moment it was just the two of them, with Breuer’s brother, Doug, hiding in the bushes taking video and bringing the couple’s dog, Evie, to be part of the proposal.
But when Katz, 34, a preschool director, called her parents to tell them she’d gotten engaged, little did she know they were already on their way from Stony Brook to Brooklyn for a celebration dinner that Breuer, 33, who works in advertising, had arranged at Frankies 457 Spuntino in Carroll Gardens. His parents had come down from Massachusetts, and the guest list of two dozen people included friends and extended family who joined them at what Katz thought was going to be an intimate dinner for the two of them.

Erica Katz, center, who grew up in Stony Brook, and fiance Alex Breuer, with their parents the night of their engagement. Credit: Courtesy Erica Katz
Breuer’s mother, Kathi, 71, says she and Breuer’s father, Dan, 72, were staying overnight near the couple’s apartment and had to stay hidden until the dinner. “At one point in the afternoon we were going to be walking by their apartment, and we had to keep Alex aware so Erica wouldn’t look out the window,” Kathi says.
“It was this elaborate scheme. I saw none of it coming,” Katz says. “Everyone shouted, ‘Surprise! Congratulations!’ My jaw was literally on the floor.” She jokes: “Had I known it was going to be this big gathering, I probably would have gotten a little more dressed up."
Helene Katz, 69, a bookkeeper, says the expression on her daughter’s face was “priceless. It was two surprises in one day.”
She says that once she was invited to be part of the engagement day, “there was no way I was missing out on any of that. When the kids get married today, it’s almost like can-you-top-this. They just want everybody to be there and be part of it, which is really nice.”