Woman Opens Netflix to Watch TV, Only to Find Her Boyfriend Replaced the TV App with a Surprise (Exclusive)
Woman Opens Netflix to Watch TV, Only to Find Her Boyfriend Replaced the TV App with a Surprise (Exclusive)
Ashley VegaThu, September 10, 2026 at 7:41 PM UTC
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Jared Douglas Greenwald and his fiancée Rebecca WrightCredit: Jared Douglas GreenwaldJared Greenwald tells PEOPLE he spent months secretly building an Apple TV app filled with about 50 “movies” inspired by his relationship with Rebecca Wright -
Jared Greenwald secretly taught himself how to code an Apple TV app to propose to his girlfriend, Rebecca Wright
The filmmaker turned about 50 memories from their relationship into Netflix-style “movies,” complete with photos, titles and descriptions
When Wright finally opened what she thought was Netflix, Greenwald had one more surprise waiting inside the couch
Jared Greenwald knew his girlfriend, Rebecca Wright, wanted a proposal that was private, romantic and impossible to see coming, so the 31-year-old filmmaker decided to hide it behind something completely ordinary: the Netflix icon on their TV.
With little coding experience to draw from, he spent months and more than 300 hours figuring out how to build a fake streaming app filled with their life together.
“I had no idea what I was actually getting myself into,” Greenwald tells PEOPLE. “The extent of my coding knowledge probably ended with the beginner class on HTML I took in college.”
The idea started after Greenwald searched online for proposal inspiration and kept finding grand gestures that didn’t feel authentic to his relationship with Wright, a 29-year-old dancer and choreographer. His dad offered another way to approach it: think of the proposal as telling a story and focus less on making it big.
That led Greenwald back to the moments that rarely make it into highlight reels: coming home after a long day, sitting beside Wright on the couch and unwinding with a movie or show. “I liked the idea of taking this normal, everyday moment and using that to create something really special,” he says.
Turning that idea into a working app proved considerably harder. Greenwald estimates he spent more than 300 hours Googling how to code an Apple TV app, then worked nights and weekends for a couple of months so Wright wouldn’t notice what he was doing.
Even finishing the app didn’t mean he was ready to propose. Greenwald realized he still couldn’t make his creation open when Wright clicked the TV’s regular Netflix app, leading him to spend an entire day recreating the icon and the parallax effect used on Apple TV.
The technology, however, was only half of what he had planned. Greenwald spent another month writing down their dinners, trips, inside jokes and other memories before narrowing them down to about 50 titles, each paired with a photo and description written like a Netflix movie logline.
There were rom-coms like “When Jared Met Becca,” a heartwarming “Home Together” and “A Very Jewish Christmas,” inspired by Greenwald meeting Wright’s family. The latter teased the story of “a Jewish boyfriend” entering his first Catholic family Christmas and realizing he had officially been welcomed into the family.
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The app Jared Greenwald made his fiancéeCredit: Jared Douglas Greenwald
Then, after barely opening Netflix for roughly two months while Greenwald worked on his secret project, the couple unexpectedly started watching Love Is Blind UK the day before he planned to propose. The next night, after dinner, Wright headed for the couch ready to continue the show and clicked the familiar Netflix icon.
Instead, Greenwald’s app appeared, and Wright froze. No matter which “movie” she selected, it played the same video: a clip from one of their favorite films, About Time, intercut with videos of the couple together.
When the screen cut to black, Greenwald reached into the couch for the ring box he had hidden earlier that day and got down on one knee. After hundreds of hours spent preparing every detail, it was the part he thought he had prepared for most that suddenly disappeared.
“Of course, I completely froze, and the entire speech I had planned flew right out of my head,” he recalls. “All I could muster up was, ‘Rebecca Wright. Will you marry me?’ ”
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The proposal was later shared on TikTok, where Wright explained that she had given Greenwald three parameters: it couldn’t happen in public, it had to be incredibly romantic and she couldn’t see it coming. Greenwald’s answer was something elaborate behind the scenes, but rooted in one of the simplest parts of their relationship.
For anyone planning their own proposal, he says recreating his 300-hour coding project isn’t the point. Instead, Greenwald recommends thinking about what matters most within the relationship and finding a way to make a partner feel seen through it.
“It ended up taking way more work and becoming a much bigger project than I ever anticipated,” he says. “But I just wanted her to feel really loved and to know how special those little moments together have always been to me.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
