As part of an ambitious, high-altitude marriage proposal, a daring pair mounted the Empire State Building’s antenna on Wednesday and unfurled a banner praising “the power of love” and peace. They were arrested shortly after.
The 2024 Netflix documentary “Skywalkers: A Love Story” focused on the Russian climbers, Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau, and their “rooftopping” adventures and developing romance.
News helicopter footage showed the two, dressed in black, with masks but no tethers, balancing on a small ledge and seemingly kissing atop the antenna of the New York building.
Rising 1,454 feet (443 meters) over midtown Manhattan, the building displayed a banner that said, “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace.”
The two lingered for a while before gathering the banner and starting to descend, working their way over the metal latticework to a broader ledge where one of them appeared to set up a piece of camera equipment and dropped to one knee. The other person took photographs with their left hand outstretched, as if inspecting a ring, after the two had another kiss and embrace.
Officers from the Police Emergency Services Unit began climbing a ladder inside the spindly building to catch them.
“Well, you can’t be up here,” an officer said in a welcome captured on police body camera footage. “We are engaged,” an off-camera speaker said in response. A few seconds later, officers reached a landing within the antenna and encountered the pair, who were climbing down a ladder and calmly spoke with police, the footage revealed.
On her social media pages, Nikolau shared pictures from the adventure, one of which featured an engagement-style ring atop a vista of Manhattan from above.
The two climbers, identified by police by their official names, Ivan Kuznetsov and Angelina Nikolau, were awaiting arraignment on accusations of reckless endangerment, burglary, and other offenses.
