‘The Most Romantic Place’

Woman Relives Grandma’s Love Story With Engagement Photo at Bryce Canyon, 63 Years Later

A granddaughter has honored her grandparents’ sweet love story after getting engaged at their favorite spot. She and her fiance also paid tribute to the magical moment by recreating an iconic photo of her grandparents from six decades ago.

Paige Orton’s grandparents Elva and Steve first met each other at Bryce Canyon in Utah in the summer of 1959.

Elva first laid eyes on Steve while looking out the window of a Utah Parks Company employee bus headed for Bryce Canyon. The girl next to Elva happened to know Steve, and Elva wished out loud that Steve would ask her on a date, according to a Facebook post by Bryce Canyon National Park.

Steve invited Elva to meet him for a fireside activity with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints less than a week later and they shared their first kiss. Elva said: “We could walk straight out in front of the Lodge to the rim. There was a great place to make out, so we did that quite frequently. What can I say? We were madly in love!”

The couple was certain that they wanted to marry each other that summer, however, Steve left on a church mission to Australia. They then made a pact that they would reunite at Bryce Canyon where their love story began.

“My future husband and I wrote letters … it was our dream to meet back here at Bryce after two years,” Elva told the National Park Service in an interview.

When Steve returned, Elva caught the first bus from her new place of work at the Grand Canyon, where she was saving up for college by working both as program director and at the post office. The bus driver was in on the couple’s special moment. As soon as they neared the canyon, he began honking the horn, and the whole bus cheered to see Steve waiting for his beloved.

Steve was then hired as a bellhop in the Grand Canyon. Dating as canyon employees was “the best,” Elva said. Their love intensified, and Steve forged a romantic plan.

“At 5:00 in the morning, he came scratching at the door … and he said, ‘Elva, let’s go out on the rim, I want to talk to you,'” Elva said. “We have prayer, and decided we wanted to get married before school started.”

The couple tied the knot two weeks later, on Sept. 22, 1962. They then traveled the world, taught in China, and, after Steve joined the military, lived in five different states. In the course of their life the pair welcomed seven children and eventually 17 grandchildren, KSL reported.

After almost 55 years of marriage, Steve passed away in 2017.

In celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary, Elva returned to Bryce Canyon with her extended family in September 2022.

They were moved to find Steve’s signature from 1957 carved near an employee’s linen cabin doorway but that wasn’t the only nostalgic moment.

The morning after, Paige was visited by her boyfriend, Garrett Arnoldsen, who drove through the night to surprise her at the canyon rim at sunrise. He proposed.

“She said yes,” Bryce Canyon National Park shared on Facebook. “In homage to her grandparents, they then recreated a photo taken of Elva and Steve at Bryce Point in 1959.”

“Growing up, this has been the most romantic place in the world to me because of your story,” Paige said to her grandmother.

Surrounded by family, the newly engaged couple recreated a photo of Elva and Steve in their Sunday best, looking out over the canyon. It must have been taken when Elva’s parents came to visit, Elva said, since neither she nor Steve had a camera.

In Paige and Garrett’s loving recreation, the groom-to-be faces the camera with a faraway smile, like Steve, while Paige has her back turned and is looking out over the hoodoos with one foot tucked behind the other, like Elva.

Elva was touched and honored that her granddaughter, Paige, kept her and Steve’s love story alive with her own pictureperfect proposal.

Elva said: “It made me very, very happy that she would want, that they would want, to start their love story in Bryce Canyon.”

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By Sandy Scott Watson