Some love stories start with a first date. This one started with a boom on a forest trail in Wisconsin.
And it ended, a year later, with a wedding.
In between was a moment that would have broken almost anyone. Eva Broderick looked over at the man she loved and saw that he wasn’t breathing.
She had just been struck by lightning too.
What she did next is the reason Nick is alive today. And it’s the reason they now share the same last name.
A Surprise Hike in Kettle Moraine
It was August 9, 2025. Nick had planned a surprise for his then-girlfriend Eva, who is from Chicago.
He took her to the Kettle Moraine State Forest in Wisconsin for a 10-mile hike.
For most of the day, everything went exactly the way he hoped.
“It was a really beautiful hike for, I would say, most of it up until the last bit,” Eva told ABC7 Chicago.
That last bit is where everything changed.
The couple were a little more than two miles from their car when the weather turned on them.
“The rain just kept getting heavier and heavier as a really big rainstorm just suddenly hit us out of nowhere,” Nick said.
There was nowhere to take shelter. So they did the only thing they could think of. They kept moving forward.
“What If We Get Struck by Lightning?”
The storm only got worse. The thunder grew so loud that Eva started to get scared.
At one point she turned around to face Nick and asked the question nobody ever wants to say out loud.
“She turned around and turned to me and said, Nick, ‘what if we get struck by lightning?'” Nick remembered.
It was only minutes later.
The last thing Nick remembers from that day is hearing a boom.
According to firefighters, the tree right next to them took a direct lightning hit. The couple was struck by the ground current.
Eva remembers far more than she would like to.
“All I remember was being, like, curled in a fetal position, like, with my, hands over my ears, like, screaming, I think,” she said.
And then, in her words, “feeling what can only be described as electricity in my feet.”
Then she looked at Nick.
Blue and Not Breathing
“I was curled into Nick, and I looked over, and he was laying on his back, like, his eyes were half open, glazed over, and he was blue and, like, not breathing,” Eva said.
Think about that moment for a second.
She was alone in the middle of a forest, in a storm. She had just been hit by lightning herself.
And the man she loved was lying on the trail, not breathing.
Eva did not freeze. She called 911.
And then she started CPR.
Every push on his chest was a fight to keep him with her until help arrived.
There was only one problem. Help had no idea where they were.
The story was reported from the Town of Eagle, and Palmyra Fire Rescue was part of the search.
Crews were on their way. But a forest is a big place when you don’t know which way to go.
Three Trails and One Best Guess
Out in the woods, the cell signal kept dropping. Eva couldn’t tell the rescue crews exactly where they were.
She couldn’t remember where they had entered the forest. She couldn’t remember which path they had taken.
On the other end of the call, firefighters were trying to narrow it down.
“It’s pinging out a mile, a mile and a half into the forest area and it’s not very specific,” Palmyra Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Dan Schiller told ABC7 Chicago.
When crews reached the trailhead, they found three different paths to choose from.
“We just took a best guess and tried to send people everywhere we could,” Schiller said.
The only way to reach the couple was on foot.
It took 50 minutes from the moment Eva called 911 for crews to reach them.
Fifty minutes. Alone. In a storm.
That’s longer than most TV episodes. Longer than most lunch breaks.
Every one of those minutes, Eva was the only thing standing between Nick and the worst day of her life.
In that time, Eva had to revive Nick twice.
“That is not something that normally happens,” Schiller said.
And she did all of it after being struck by lightning herself.
Her body had just taken a shock of its own. She was soaked, scared and alone. She kept going anyway.
“This is pretty extraordinary on its own,” Schiller said.
Rewriting August
Nick was taken to a hospital, where he spent three days recovering.
He didn’t walk away without scars. He still has some hearing loss in one ear and tendon issues from the strike.
But he walked away. And he knew exactly who to thank for that.
After he was released from the hospital, Nick proposed to Eva.
She said yes.
This August, about a year after the storm, the two of them got married.
The timing was no accident.
“We wanted to rewrite August and make it a better month,” Nick said.
Eva, for her part, has found a way to laugh about the day she saved his life.
“I’ve made the joke quite a few times that he can’t leave me. I brought him back from death, so he’s kind of stuck with me,” she said.
Her bravery hasn’t gone unnoticed.
According to ABC7 Chicago, Eva is set to be honored with the Lifesavers Award at the Palmyra Fire Department for saving Nick.
It’s hard to think of anyone who has earned it more.
Their story was reported by WTMJ in Milwaukee and shared through CNN Newsource, ABC7 Chicago and Good News Network.
It’s easy to see why. It has a little bit of everything: terror, courage, a proposal and a wedding.
There is a lesson tucked inside this story, too.
Storms can build fast, even on a beautiful day. If you hear thunder on a hike, it’s a sign to look for safer ground, not to wait it out.
And knowing CPR matters. Eva didn’t have a medical team or a signal she could count on. She had her own two hands.
Those hands kept the man she loved alive for 50 minutes.
Most couples promise to stick together through anything on their wedding day.
Nick and Eva had already proven it before they ever walked down the aisle.
She brought him back. Twice.
And then he asked her to spend the rest of her life with him.
Would you have known what to do in Eva’s place? Tell us in the comments, and share this with someone who should learn CPR.
