After wrapping up a shift at Neat Bourbon Bar and Bottle Shop on the first Saturday in May a year ago, Eddy Stieren joked with longtime girlfriend Carrie Stobaugh that the next time he’d be off work on the day of the Kentucky Derby would be “if I either die or get married.”
He was right. On a warm and sunny evening this weekend at Churchill Downs , Stieren and Stobaugh tied the knot in the infield, surrounded by a few of their closest friends and 156,710 race attendees in the crowd around them.
“Carrie said, ‘Well, you know, you could put a ring on it.’ We’d been together 11 years at that point, and I said ‘You’ve got to be careful what you wish for,'” he remembered this week. “So this will be, most likely, my only Derby off and not working until the day I retire.”
Derby season has always been woven into their story. It started when they met at a Thunder Over Louisville party in 2012. It continued when Stieren got down on one knee and proposed last August at Saratoga Race Course on the day of the Travers Stakes. They love horse racing, he said, so his idea to exchange rings under the bright lights of Churchill Downs was a natural fit.