The mountaintop proposal was a surprise — and the drone captured it all

After eight years of dating, Brady Pendery didn’t want his proposal to Paige Rhinehart to be anticlimactic. He wanted it to be spectacular.

So he staged a backpacking trip with Rhinehart to Colorado and surprised her by popping the question on a snowcapped mountain — and captured the panoramic grandeur of the moment for posterity on his newly purchased drone.

“I had no idea he was going to ask,” Rhinehart said in a Facebook message to the Star-Telegram on Thursday from Arizona.

Both are 26, from Fort Worth and have backpacked together since before they started dating at 17, Rhinehart said.

They’re both photographers, she said, “so I wasn’t surprised at all that he wanted to fly his new Mavic Pro on a peak. ... I’m used to having to stand in for test shots, so that’s what I was doing in the video.”

The video opens with aerial shots of a waterfall, a stream and the mountains and then cuts to an overhead shot of the couple on top of Bald Mountain in Telluride. The song “Overwhelmed,” by Tim McMorris, accompanies the video Brady posted on YouTube. It opens with the line, “From the first time I saw you I knew that you’d be mine.”

“He told me we should get a picture of us looking at the mountain. Then he said, ‘Hey, baby, turn around,’” Rhinehart said.

As the drone slowly circles, Pendery gets down on one knee and makes his case for what seems like forever in the video.

“Ever since the first day I met you, I knew you were the one for me,” he says he told her. “I can’t tell you how much you mean to me. I don’t think I can even try.”

He made a heroic effort, judging by the length of time he spends on the ground. One wonders what he could be saying and if it seemed a long time to Rhinehart.

“As soon as I turned around and saw him on his knee, I wanted to hug him,” Rhinehart said. “It was hard to wait, although what he said was so beautiful and perfect. After so many years of dating and talking about getting married there’s a lot of build-up to that moment and I was just so excited and shocked. We had both wanted to get married years before but wanted to make sure everything was perfect. And it was! ... I definitely cried and he tried his hardest not to.”

In the video, the two finally hug and then Pendery slips a specially made ring onto Rhinehart’s finger to make it official.

To celebrate, he booked reservations at a resort and spa for when they got off the mountain. Rhinehart had only brought workout clothes on the trip, but her mom and sister-in-law packed her a dinner outfit, which Pendery hid in the car.

After the spa visit, the pair was back on the trail, headed for the Grand Canyon, and planned to finish up at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico this weekend.

Rhinehart just graduated from Sam Houston State University with a sociology degree and is looking for work. Pendery is transferring from Texas A&M University to a college in Fort Worth and majoring in electrical engineering.

The newly engaged couple hasn’t set a date yet — sometime next year. (Don’t be surprised if there’s a drone involved.)

This story was originally published June 22, 2017 at 12:36 PM with the headline "The mountaintop proposal was a surprise — and the drone captured it all."