Hannah Austin had taken off the ring to eat a sloppy burger when her husband accidentally knocked it into a lake.
Hannah and Chris Austin found themselves in a desperate situation while devouring burgers at a popular Texas restaurant built on a lake, when her wedding ring fell into the water.
It all started when the Colorado Springs, Colo., couple visited The Gnarly Gar restaurant on Point Venture's Lake Travis last month.
Hannah had taken off her engagement ring to eat and placed it on the table when her husband accidentally knocked it into the water.
“I didn't tell him I took it off and he knocked it off with his elbow,” she recalled to Inside Edition. "I feel really stupid now, looking back on it, but I like big, juicy burgers."
The ring fell right through the wood slats and into the water. She was heartbroken and thought the ring was lost forever.
“It had diamonds from my mother's wedding ring and stones from my great-grandmother's engagement ring,” she said. “It wasn't just one of those 'go to the jewelry store and pick up just any old ring.'”
Everyone pitched in to help find it, but the lake is 74 feet deep.
“There were literally all these bellies lying on the deck looking through the crack,” she recalled.
Then, someone suggested calling in a scuba diver.
“I was like surely that is not a service that people provide,” she said. “That is not a real thing.”
But diver Robert Weiss rushed to the restaurant with his gear and headed into the murky depths. A weighted line was dropped to guide him to the bottom of the lake where the ring might be.
The ring's worried owner was not at all hopeful.
“There are fish everywhere, and catfish like you have never seen, big, and floating on the top waiting for people to drop food for them, so I thought the ring was inside one of the catfish,” she said.
Then, a miracle happened — the diver found her ring!
“I just fell to the floor," she said. "Then he asked, 'Is this it?’ and I’m like, 'That is my ring!’”
Her husband says that no matter what they eat, her ring will stay on.
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