Singer/songwriter Josiah Carr didn’t originally have the popular midtown restaurant Chuy’s in mind when he planned to spring a flash mob marriage proposal on his now-fiancé Blake Loyd.
“My original idea was to do it at the Green Hills Mall,” he said, “but they actually told me they didn’t support same-sex couples, so I didn’t do it there. They said they were fearful it would make their clientele uncomfortable and I was like, the last thing I wanna do when I’m getting engaged is for anyone to be uncomfortable, you know what I’m saying? It’s supposed to be a happy thing.”
“Anyway, I went to Chuy’s that day for lunch, after I talked to the mall,” he said, “and I was thinking, ‘this is a really fun atmosphere’ so I talked to the manager there and he was super supportive. He was like, ‘yeah, this sounds like a really fun idea!’”
Chuy’s, it turns out, pulled out all the stops. “They were 100% supportive,” he said. “Their entire staff was in on it. They actually opened early one morning for me to test the music out on their sound system. And then, on Wednesday May 28th, the night before the engagement, they actually stayed open until midnight so that we could all have a dress rehearsal in there free of charge as well. They were super, super supportive.”
The video of the proposal has been viewed on YouTube nearly 9500 times since it was uploaded just one week ago. It’s been shared around the world via Josiah’s personal network and also through links shared by Instinct Magazine and Chicago’s LGBT newspaper, Windy City Times.
The couple, who celebrated one year together just a couple weeks ago, moved to Nashville late last year. “Blake’s originally from Louisiana and I’m originally from Georgia and we both happened to be living in Portland, Oregon which is so crazy,” he said. “I was in Portland last summer, for a summer job, and it was a matter of days after I moved there that I met Blake and I told him, ‘I’m just giving you a heads up. I don’t really wanna have a summer fling but at the same time I know for a fact that I’m moving, and he said why don’t we just cross that bridge when we get there.’”
“Nashville’s great,” he said. “I lived here about three years ago trying to do music. That was right after I had come out so I was more often at Play seven nights a week partying and not focusing on music but trying to tell myself I was. So I moved away and I traveled for a while, and this time around I’m much more focused and a little bit older so … we love it here now.”
Carr, 24, and his fiancé Loyd, 26, have been promoting the video across social media the past week in hopes it will catch the eye of Ellen DeGeneres. “My goal is for us to get on Ellen, or something like that just because we really, really love Ellen and it would be interesting to meet her, so we’ve been trying to promote it as much as we can in hopes that we can meet her and talk about the engagement.”
So when is the couple getting married?
“Right now it’s more of a money thing,” he said. “It’s probably gonna be a year and a half or two years. Blake’s thinking June of 2016. I would like before that but it just depends on money. Be sure to tell everyone the song that I wrote in the video is available on iTunes! It would be ideal if the video goes viral and the song goes viral too so that we can pay for our wedding!”