New York City was minding its business on a Wednesday afternoon when two extreme climbers decided the Empire State Building’s antenna looked like the perfect backdrop for a marriage proposal. On July 1, 2026, self-described neoartist Angela Nikolau, 33, and her partner Ivan Beerkus, 32 (legally known to the NYPD as Ivan Kuznetsov), scaled the very top of the iconic skyscraper.
And here’s the kicker: there were no ropes, no harnesses, and no safety gear whatsoever. Just two people clinging to a live television transmission tower in 89-degree heat like it was a totally normal Tuesday activity.
Tourists on the observation deck got a front-row seat to the chaos, and social media got the viral moment of the summer. For this couple, apparently, the line between “reckless trespassing” and “performance art” doesn’t really exist. According to police documents obtained by CBS NEWS, the pair, who live in East Orange, New Jersey, are now facing some very real, very serious legal consequences for their sky-high stunt.
So, How Exactly Do You Even Get Up There?
Around noon, NYC streets were shut down as emergency crews responded to reports of two people climbing the building’s needle. Police say Nikolau and Beerkus snuck through a maintenance hatch on the 103rd floor, an area that is very much off-limits to the public, before free-climbing the rest of the way up.
Local news aerial footage captured the whole thing: the couple, dressed head to toe in black and wearing cat-face masks, casually navigating one of the tallest points in Manhattan. At the very top of the spire, they unfurled a massive black banner reading “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace,” a line often credited to Jimi Hendrix.
Onlookers were stunned. The couple, meanwhile, posed for photos while police helicopters circled overhead, because if you’re going to commit multiple felonies, you might as well get some good content out of it.
Then came the part everyone’s actually talking about. After climbing back up from a brief descent, the couple moved to a lower platform on the tower, where Beerkus dropped to one knee and pulled out a ring. Nikolau pulled off her mask for a kiss, and just like that, an illegal climb became an engagement story for the ages.
Eyewitness Julie Morris, who was on the observation deck, said the couple wasn’t wearing masks at first, which apparently made tourists assume they had official permission to be up there. Another witness, Maeve Mulgrew, said the couple waved down at the crowd and joked that coming down to their own arrest so willingly was basically proof of true love. Sweet sentiment, questionable life choices.
The romance didn’t get much runway, though. NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit was already waiting, and the newly engaged couple was taken into custody just before 1 p.m.
The Internet Loved It, Building Officials Did Not
Before the pair was taken into custody, Nikolau, who describes herself on Instagram as a “neoartist exploring identity, fear & freedom,” posted her own photos from the stunt. One shot showed off her new engagement ring against the sweeping backdrop of the city skyline, while another captured the couple linking pinkies thousands of feet above the ground. She kept the caption simple, just naming the location: Empire State Building, New York.
And while everyone online is losing it over the engagement photos, city officials and building engineers are decidedly less charmed. An Empire State Building spokesperson confirmed the breach was resolved safely, but pointed out that the actual legal observation deck is right there and remains a perfectly good place to propose.
The stunt also caused a real headache behind the scenes, forcing the building to shut down the antenna entirely due to the risks of live radio waves and high electrical currents. Former chief broadcast engineer John Cleary told local news outlets that the transmission tower is saturated with radio-frequency, electromagnetic radiation and that scaling it in extreme heat without safety gear is exactly as dangerous as it sounds.
As for the legal fallout, it is shaping up to be brutal. Police say Nikolau and Beerkus are facing burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, possession of burglar’s tools, violation of local law, criminal tampering, and disorderly conduct. Turns out viral fame comes with a receipt.
This also isn’t their first rodeo. The couple previously starred in the 2024 Netflix documentary Skywalkers: A Love Story, which followed their history of illegally scaling the world’s tallest buildings. In the trailer, Beerkus described this lifestyle as an essential expanded state of mind, while Nikolau said she believes human potential gets unlocked on the other side of fear. Sure, okay.
They’re Not the First, But They Might Be the Boldest
This latest stunt adds to a long, chaotic history of daredevils treating the New York skyline as their own personal jungle gym. The Empire State Building has hosted climbers before, though usually with explicit permission, such as when musician Jared Leto scaled the exterior in 2023 to promote his band’s world tour.
The city has also seen its fair share of unauthorized climbs, from a 2018 political protest on the Statue of Liberty to a 2016 stunt where a man scaled Trump Tower using suction cups. Even pop culture has been obsessed with this building specifically for decades, thanks to the iconic image of King Kong clinging to its exterior.
For employees working inside the building, like Jessica Kaplan, the whole ordeal raises legitimate questions about security, even as officials insist tenants were never actually in danger. As Nikolau and Beerkus wait for their court date to face a very long list of charges, they’ve left behind one seriously dramatic engagement story that pushed the definition of “romantic gesture” to brand new heights.
