When Carol Leonard turned 88, she was expecting a quiet dinner with her granddaughter, her daughter and perhaps a few birthday wishes.
What she didn’t expect was that her “favorite person” would walk into the restaurant with flowers, a card and a big grin. In a TikTok videoher granddaughter, Lexi Leonard, captured the moment her boyfriend, her grandmother’s favorite person, joined the party. Leonard, 23, spoke to Newsweek about the moment and her grandmother’s adorable reaction.
In the video, Carol sat at the dinner table before realizing that Leonard’s boyfriend, Luca de Lancellotti, was walking toward her with peonies in hand. She made a face of surprise and glee, before several bashful looks at Leonard’s camera.
@ lexmleo / gustok
It’s a rare moment for her grandmother, Leonard said.
“She was totally surprised and flustered, and speechless, which is hard for her to be,” Leonard said. “She’s very intelligent and quick witted, so pulling off the surprise was a challenge, but we managed to do it successfully.”
The plan came together at the last minute, when de Lancellotti initially told Carol he wouldn’t be able to attend her birthday dinner due to a funeral in Connecticut.
“My boyfriend, my aunt and I were planning to have dinner with my grandma on her 88th birthday,” Leonard explained. “My boyfriend is super close to my grandma as well and they are the best of friends.”
But de Lancellotti wasn’t going to let the special day pass by without showing up.
“Regardless of his long day and his commute, he still wanted to be a part of her special day,” Leonard said. “We had already told my grandma he couldn’t make her dinner, so that’s when the idea of a surprise came to mind. After the funeral…he commuted from Connecticut to New Jersey to surprise her. He walked into the restaurant and came to our table, with peonies in hand and a birthday card.”
‘Always Been Very Close’
The bond between de Lancellotti and Carol has been strong from the beginning.
“They have always been very close since the second they met each other,” Leonard said. “They both are super social and outgoing, and just hit it off right away.”
Leonard said that de Lancellotti goes out of his way to pay her a visit, while she ensures her home is equipped with plenty of delicious things for him to eat.
“My grandma always goes out of her way to do special things for him when she sees him, like make him brownies, or brunch, or make sure his favorite things are stocked up in the house,” Leonard said.
After the surprise, Carol still had a lot of questions.
“She was still in total shock, which you can see in the video,” Leonard said. “After a few minutes, the conversation turned back to normal, but she had so many questions of how we managed to pull off the surprise. We celebrated with dessert and blowing out her birthday candles—and came home and chatted more.”
“An 88th birthday is a big one,” Leonard concluded. “So we were happy to see that everyone online loved the surprise as much as we did.”
