CONWAY — Decked out in a sparkling shirt and backed by several dancers while ABBA’s smash hit “Dancing Queen” blared, Conway native Tyler Conroy’s flash mob at his ex-girlfriend’s wedding has gone viral, racking up more than 2 million views in less than 48 hours on the social media platform TikTok.
Conroy, who now lives in New York City, posted two videos, one of which shows his bridesman’s speech leading up to the flash mob and the second video of the dance itself. Both have garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and millions of views. The dance can be seen at bit.ly/3Od6NUh, while the speech can be seen at bit.ly/3EpSC9Z.
He said the dance was planned in a “secret ABBA dance group chat” after the bride, Sunderland native Dale Murphy, sent her mom, Lorna Murphy, a TikTok showing a group dancing to the ABBA song “Super Trouper,” which inspired Lorna Murphy to send it to Conroy.
“(Lorna Murphy) probably texted me every single day: ‘Are you planning the ‘Mamma Mia!’ moment for Dale?’” Conroy said. “We had two rehearsals.”
Conroy gathered two of the bridesmaids and several other attendees, including Lorna Murphy, who is a Sunderland resident and was decked out in a “Mamma Mia!” outfit as they danced at the wedding in Leicester, North Carolina.
“The bride was speechless,” Conroy said. “Oh my gosh, it was a lot of laughs.”
While it might seem a little strange that Conroy showed up to his high school ex-girlfriend’s wedding to dance, he said the story makes more sense when there is more context. Conroy met Murphy in the seventh grade at Frontier Regional School and they were friends for years before long-distance dating for about eight months from summer 2010 to spring 2011. They weren’t friends for some time after breaking up in 2011, but Conroy came out as gay later that year and explained to Murphy why things didn’t work out, which patched their friendship up. They’ve been close friends ever since.
“When I finally came out, I could explain everything to her,” he said.
While Conroy and Murphy were dating, Conroy said he’d record monthly “anniversary” videos to commemorate their relationship while apart from one another. The ABBA dance, he explained, was “one last video before she got married.”
Conroy said he never expected each video to get millions of views and it’s just been an “insane” experience to see so many people on the internet taking joy in them.
“I knew that it would be fun,” Conroy said. “I knew that ‘Mamma Mia!’ was obviously super popular and weddings in general are popular. … I did expect them to get a couple thousand views, but definitely not a million.”
Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.