When it comes to beating the odds, Katy Sullivan has a pretty impressive track record. Despite being a double above-knee amputee, she set a record for American runners in the 2012 London Paralympics using prosthetic legs. The Broadway actress is also the first amputee to receive a Tony Award nomination. So, when her Illinois apartment went up in flames just days before her wedding, she wasn’t about to let the damage ruin the most important day of her life.
Katy wasn’t planning an ordinary wedding. Instead, she was hosting a small dinner party with her partner, Scott Aiello, who had no idea that a ceremony would follow the meal. However, the fire that devastated the couple’s apartment building also forced the bride-to-be to rethink a few of the details — particularly, the element of surprise. She decided to tell her partner everything.
“I started crying on Saturday morning,” Katy recalled to Inside Edition Digital. “I told him that I had planned a surprise wedding. We talked about it and he just was like, ‘let’s do it anyway.'”
If that wasn’t enough to convince the actress that she was marrying the perfect man, he’d already proven himself during the night of the fire. As residents fled their apartments, Scott had one mission on his mind: getting his partner to safety.
“We walked out of that apartment with our laptops. I had my prosthetic legs, my purse and our dog. He left his wallet and his cellphone in the apartment,” Katy said. “I was saying to somebody the next day: a man is more concerned about getting you and your dog out of a burning building, and he leaves his phone and his wallet. You marry that man.”
Katy and Scott were married just a couple of days later. Since their apartment was no longer a viable venue, they moved the celebration to Scott’s mom’s house. According to the couple, it couldn’t have been more beautiful.
“I think when you’re faced with something so devastating … it just felt like we were deciding to choose joy and deciding to move forward with a commitment to each other,” said Katy.
You can find the source of this story’s featured images here and here.
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