From Epic to Ever After – The Thuan and Eva Story
October, 2025 

By Sarah Hodges

As this year’s Diwali approaches, the Still & Moving community will celebrate not only the timeless epic of Ram and Sita, but also the love story of Thuan Nguyen and Eva McKinsey.

Last year in 2024 at Still & Moving Center’s enactment of The Ramayana epic, the heroic prince Ram and princess Sita waved and smiled brightly from their golden chariot. The crowd cheered for the two newlyweds. Thuan and his lovely partner Eva played the parts of the prince and princess. Little did Thuan know that only months later their stage roles would spill into real life.

Onstage, Thuan embodied the noble character of Ram; offstage, Eva realized she had found her prince for this life. Their love story had already carried them across continents. They first met in North Carolina and began traveling together almost immediately. Each of their adventurous spirits enhanced the other’s.

Pet-sitting gigs took them from the Caribbean to California; work, school and family pulled them between Europe, Vietnam, Central and South America and the US. Eva pursued her social psychology career. Thuan worked remotely and made music. Together, they fearlessly explored the world. Eventually, they decided they needed to settle for a longer period of time. They discovered a home in Hawaiʻi, with Eva joining the University of Hawaiʻi for a research position.

Thuan began working as a Still & Moving staff member and Functional Fitness instructor. A few months after he joined us, director Renée Tillotson approached him one afternoon in the kitchen. “We have a performance coming up,” she explained to him. “You wouldn’t be required to learn lines. It’s a fun and simple narrated reenactment of an Indian epic… You and Eva would be perfect for the lead prince and princess!”

Thuan didn’t know what he was getting into, but it sounded like the thing to do. He agreed.
Thuan and Eva made their stage debut together.

As the story of Ram and Sita goes, Princess Sita holds the power to choose her husband. Prince Ram attends the competition with many other eager gentlemen to show their strength and worthiness of this great honor. When only Prince Ram manages to lift the sacred bow that no other man can lift, Sita knows the gods have given her the sign that Ram is the one for her.

Princess Sita makes her choice and bestows her marriage garland around the neck of Prince Ram.

And then, to everyone’s surprise, only two months after the performance, Eva proposed to Thuan.

The following January, back with Eva’s family in California, Eva staged a moment of her own. On a trail near Joshua Tree, she and her sisters decorated a bush with tinsel and blankets. Later that afternoon, Eva led Thuan there, and as they sat talking, she slipped him a note from her jacket. At first he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. Suddenly, something seemed different. Then came the ring. Surprised and overjoyed, Thuan said simply, “I would and I do.”

Hearing about Eva’s proposal to Thuan, our Diwali director Renée Tillotson and Diwali’s beloved narrator Doris Morisaki chuckled gleefully, taking a bit of credit. Perhaps playing a married prince and princess in such a sacred Indian tale sparked the happy couple to take the leap a little sooner. And fittingly, Eva made the choice, just as Princess Sita does.

Later, back in Hawai’i, Thuan returned the gesture. In a little park in Makiki, he laid out a picnic and surprised Eva with a hand-drawn image of the house where she lived when he met her, the big tree of their special park, and the red barn where they would get married. Between these, he drew the two of them together. As former staff member Anna Morales snapped photos from behind some trees, Thuan offered a ring to Eva, proposing back to her.

Now, one year later, the couple prepares to marry in North Carolina just weeks before this year’s Diwali performance. The timing feels poetic. Just as they stepped into the golden chariot as Ram and Sita, waving to cheering crowds, they now step into their own real-life union. Renée and Doris, with their twinkling laughter, can’t help but wonder whether the magic of the Ramayana nudged this beautiful couple forward. After all, in both stories, it is the princess who chooses.