A news anchor in Tennessee got engaged in what seems to be the most fitting way possible.
Cornelia Nicholson, 28, an evening news anchor with Local 3 News in Chattanooga was filming promotional videos for her station when her boyfriend and morning anchor Riley Nagel, 30, “caught her off guard,” Nicholson told McClatchy News in an interview. “Everyone involved in filming promo had me record the video like three times because of what they said was camera issues,” Nicholson said in the phone interview. “I recorded it the first two times and the script stayed the same, but on the third take the script changed.”
Nicholson met Nagel in 2020 after moving to Montana from Southern California for a job at a news station.
“I remember getting to Montana and everyone was so nice greeting me, then I see this guy in the back not even say hello and run off to an editing bay,” Nicholson said. “I thought, ‘OK, this guy is kinda rude.’” Although Nagel’s first impression wasn’t up to par, Nicholson said the two worked together when she was asked to shadow him as a reporter. “We were on our way to our first story and we just realized how much we had in common. I was surprised. I’m a Black woman from Southern California, and he’s a white man from a town in Montana with a population of like 500 people,” she said. The two started dating a month after meeting, Nicholson said. Fast forward three years later and Nagel proposed to Nicholson in the “way she wanted,” she said.
“I thought it’d be fitting to ask you this question here, since we met in news,” Nagel can be heard in the Aug. 21 TikTok that’s amassed more than 3.5 million views as of Aug. 22. Nicholson said she doesn’t know how Nagel kept the secret from her. She had an idea she’d get proposed to soon because the couple had been talking about it but thought getting engaged on TV was no longer a possibility. “Riley told me he didn’t think it could happen exactly how I wanted it to and I didn’t care. I just wanted to get engaged to him, he’s my soulmate. Little did I know he was just trying to throw me off his scene,” Nicholson said. The two don’t have any wedding plans yet, but Nicholson said their families are excited.
It ain't gonna last