Chicago couple steals show at Oscars
HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES -- A Chicago man and his fiancee, who were part of a tour group in Hollywood, had no clue they were about to walk into the spotlight at the Academy Awards ceremony Sunday night.
It's hard to steal the show at the Oscars, but "Gary from Chicago" and his fiancee did just that.
Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel unloaded a sightseeing bus full of unsuspecting tourists into the Dolby Theatre on the night of the awards show.
Gary Alan Cole, wearing a Hollywood sweatshirt and a black baseball cap, seemed completely at ease when he introduced himself to Kimmel and then took out his phone to snap some pictures of all of the movie stars in the front row.
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Right behind him, his fiancee Vicki was overwhelmed and excited. When Kimmel asked her who her favorite actor was, she pointed to Denzel Washington.
Washington approached the couple as Kimmel asked him to be the best man at their wedding. Washington then grabbed the couple's hands and pronounced them, "husband and wife."
Cole took breaks to kiss Meryl Streep's hand and to take a few selfies.
Meanwhile, Anthony Anderson from the ABC show "Blackish" said Denzel is not qualified to marry people, but he is. So he offered to marry the Chicago couple live on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" That would be quite the wedding.
"The couple from Chicago, I am actually ordained to marry people, so if they are here, I will marry them. It didn't really count when Denzel did it. I'm actually ordained to marry people in the state of California. So if they're around, I was trying to get them up here so I could marry them on this show. Why wait 'til July?" Anderson said.
The Chicago Bulls immediately offered Gary the chance to come to a Bulls game and Gino's East offered him free pizza.
The couple will appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Monday night on ABC7.
Cole wasn't the only Chicago connection to the Oscars. Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Tarell Alvin McCraney picked up the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for "Moonlight."
McCraney wrote the play that "Moonlight" is based on while he was attending DePaul University.
