Cymber Browder had always wanted to be in one of the short films her boyfriend's brother makes and posts to YouTube.
So when Seth McMurry, her boyfriend of about a year, asked her to co-star with him in a James Bond-style action sequence to be shot atop a downtown Little Rock parking garage, she didn't have to think twice.
She just didn't know about the twist ending he had in store.
McMurry and his brother had actually contrived the whole thing as a creative, one-of-a-kind way for Seth McMurry to surprise Browder with a marriage proposal in the final shot.
The result — an explosive action sequence that includes a helicopter crash and ends with McMurry on one knee — has been a hit on multiple levels. Browder said yes and loved the idea. And so have tens of thousands of viewers who've watched the finished product online.
The 23-year-old Browder, who met McMurry, 26, through friends they both knew at the University of Arkansas, estimates she alone is responsible for at least 100 of the 316,000 views it had racked up by early Friday morning.
"It makes me choke up almost every single time I watch it," she said. "It was literally just the most perfect day of my life."
McMurry — who grew up in Little Rock and is the owner of two Painting With A Twist franchises in central Arkansas and a third in Fort Smith — said the idea was actually a "last-minute" alternative to a surprise proposal he had considered in New York City.
Doing it in Arkansas instead meant the couple could be closer to family for post-engagement celebrations. And it meant McMurry could enlist the help of his brother's filmmaking skills for the movie shoot cover.
"She knew we do our little videos or whatever, so I just told her, 'Hey, Andrew needs you and I to be in this short little video,'" Seth McMurry recalled, noting the James Bond plot also worked well since it had the two stars fancily dressed for the big moment.
The minute-and-a-half video begins with McMurry and Browder running along the parking garage's uppermost level, fleeing from a digitally added helicopter that's shooting in quick succession toward the couple from a pair of front-mounted turrets. The familiar Little Rock skyline lingers in the background.
Cut to a closeup of McMurry, who opens fire on the attackers. Now there are two enemy copters, so Browder aims a machine gun and blasts one of the hovering attackers, disabling it. But then it's crashing toward her, so McMurry rushes to push her out of the way, saving her but leaving her — very much intentionally — on the ground with her back to him for a few seconds.
In that brief moment, McMurry readied the ring and the reveal.
"I was very nervous, obviously," he said Thursday, nearly a month after the May 7 shoot but just days after it was posted to YouTube, "I wasn't so much nervous about her saying 'no,' I knew how much she loved me, I knew this is what she wanted. I was just nervous about making it perfect for her, making it everything she would want in a proposal."
Andrew McMurry, Seth's 22-year-old brother, was jittery too — "super-nervous," he said — even though he has plenty of experience as a moviemaker and a few viral video hits to his credit. More than 570,000 people subscribe to Andrew McMurry's channel, his "Mario vs. Minecraft" video has more than 24.5 million views and making YouTube videos is his full-time job.
But this shoot had high sentimental stakes. There couldn't be a retake.
"It was crazy because I was honestly just really wanting to get the shot right," Andrew McMurry said. "I really wanted to get everything in the shot. That's kind of what was going through my mind. Then it was also 'oh wow, this is really, really cool. My brother just proposed to his girlfriend and I'm able to do this for him.' That felt really good."
The video — which took Andrew McMurry just two days to have the special effects added in — captures Browder's emotions as she turns around and realizes her boyfriend is popping the question.
She's in tears by the time he places the ring on her finger.
"I was shocked, I was overwhelmed, I was just so happy," Browder said. "Obviously this is the love of my life on one knee with a beautiful ring asking me to marry him. My hands started shaking and I was crying — and not the cute kind of cry. It was the most amazing moment of my life."
Browder said she's heard from old friends and classmates, relatives, acquaintances and even random people from places like Germany and China as the unique engagement video made the rounds online. That attention, she said, has only reinforced the magic of that day.
But there is one drawback: Browder still hasn't truly been invited to star in one of Andrew McMurry's massively popular online videos. That James Bond storyline, after all, was just a ruse to get to the proposal, and the video is posted on her fiance's channel and not his brother's.
"I feel like once I'm his sister-in-law, he'll have to put me in one," Browder said with a laugh, then perhaps reconsidering. "I guess [the proposal video] counts. But I'm not going to let him know it counts."