Bride Goes Viral After Taking Dad on Honeymoon (Exclusive)

Tobi Elder couldn’t wait to tie the knot with her fiancé on May 9 in Hawaii, and take their dream honeymoon after. The couple had originally planned to get married in Denver, but after receiving a bonus at work, Tobi decided to splurge on a destination celebration instead.

But just 36 hours before their flight, the relationship unexpectedly fell apart — leaving the Omaha, Neb., native heartbroken. Still, despite the emotional blow, Tobi made a bold decision: she was going to take the trip alone.

“I had everything pre-booked,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “At first, I thought, ‘I have to cancel some of this — these are things you do as a couple.’ I figured I’d lose all my money. But everyone was so kind. They refunded me. They were just so, so sweet over in Hawaii.”

On the day of the trip, Tobi says she cried through the entire flight. The flight attendants tried to comfort her with snacks and frequent check-ins. “It was almost comical,” she says.

But everything changed the moment she landed — thanks to an unexpected message.

“My dad texted me and said, ‘Sweetheart, I’m coming. I don’t want you to be there alone,’ ” she recalls of her 68-year-old father, Robert. “He told me, ‘I can’t get there until Friday,’ which would’ve been my wedding day. So I was like, ‘Okay, I just have to make it through two days alone.’ ”

Although she couldn’t wait to see him, Tobi was concerned about her dad making the long journey.

He has weight issues, diabetes and had just had a toe removed. “I told him, ‘Dad, you can’t sit on a plane that long — one of the flights is six hours!’ ” she says. But Robert was undeterred. “He just said, ‘I’m coming, no matter what.’ ”

When he finally arrived in Hawaii, on the island of O‘ahu, Tobi went to pick him up at the airport. She couldn’t help but laugh as she watched him pacing outside the terminal, struggling to spot her.

“I had the window down and was yelling, ‘Dad, I’m right here!’ ” she says.

In that moment, she pulled out her phone and started recording, planning to show him the footage later. But she never got around to it and eventually decided to post the clip on TikTok.

“When you’re heartbroken on what was supposed to be your honeymoon in Hawaii, so your dad flies 2,500 miles to hang out with you,” she wrote in the on-screen text.

At the time, she didn’t think much of it; she just wanted to show off how cute her dad is. But the video quickly gained traction.

Since then, it’s been viewed more than 5.5 million times and has racked up more than 2,200 comments.

“You dodged a bullet and won at life,” one comment read.

“Dads like this are the best,” another user wrote.

Someone else chimed in: “Don’t know you but proud of you for going anyway and happy your dad went with you.”

Speaking to PEOPLE, Tobi says the response online moved her deeply, especially the comments from other women.

“I’m so empathetic with everything, but the messages from women saying, ‘I lost my dad’ or ‘I didn’t have a dad’ made me cry,” Tobi says. “I’m so lucky to have him.”

“My dad is a contractor,” she adds. “He works really hard for a living — he builds decks and remodels homes. He really shouldn’t be working anymore, but he does. He was even trying to reschedule a build that week just so he could come.”

Looking back on the trip now, Tobi says her favorite moment was visiting Pearl Harbor, a place her dad had been talking about for 20 years.

“Seeing all the joy and love in his eyes, that’s what took my pain away,” she says.

“I think there’s always a silver lining to everything, even the painful things,” she says. “This happened to me, but I got to give my dad his dream, a bucket-list moment. And he got to be there for me. That’s priceless. It’s something we’ll both remember forever. He came just to help me, and I’ll never forget that kind of support.”