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Elena Volkova and Peter Napolitano are having a free wedding set up by a ‘kindness influencer’ with 13 million followers
Just three months. That’s how long Russian doctors expected Elena Volkova to live when she was a baby in Kyrgyzstan.
She beat those odds. Decades later, days after her 38th birthday in 2022, she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
And yet this weekend, the Port Washington mom will say “I do” to the love of her life during a fairytale wedding of sorts at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
Doctors have been underestimating Volkova for 42 years. Through more than four years of cancer treatment, along with two spinal fractures and the loss of a baby girl during pregnancy, she keeps going for her two boys and for the man who stands by her.
Volkova and her fiancé, Peter Napolitano, 54, will marry at 3 p.m. Sunday at 620 Loft & Garden, a rooftop venue overlooking Fifth Avenue. The wedding came together in about two weeks, and it started with a chance encounter this month with Keegan Gordon, a South African social media influencer known as BigManKG who counts more than 13 million followers across social media.
Gordon approached the couple while they were grocery shopping at North Shore Farms in Port Washington. With a camera rolling, he offered them cash, listened to their story and promised them a wedding on the spot.
Social media posts of that meeting have received more than 5 million views. Subsequent posts sharing Napolitano’s on-bended-knee proposal aboard Rockefeller Center’s Skylift rooftop attraction garnered millions more views — and tears from around the world.
“There’s millions of people who are invested now,” Gordon told Greater Long Island. “Everyone’s saying, ‘Where’s the update? Did it happen? Is it happening?’”
It’s definitely happening. Wish Upon a Wedding, a national nonprofit that grants weddings to couples facing terminal illness, is paying for the day.
David’s Bridal and Uneek Jewelry also stepped in, providing the dress and the engagement ring, and a GoFundMe effort that Gordon kicked off for the family has raised more than $14,000.
But the moment Volkova treasures most can’t be bought. Her two sons, ages 12 and 10, will walk their mother down the aisle.
$500 or a full cart
Gordon initially walked up to the couple with a wide smile and a simple offer: $500 in cash, or a cart full of groceries on him. He’s done this type of thing for years in his hometown of Johannesburg. This month is his first time doing it in New York.
Port Washington didn’t welcome him at first.
“There were some people who told me it was embarrassing that I’m filming trying to give people money,” Gordon said. “Maybe they were having a bad day.”
Volkova and Napolitano rarely shop at the small market, but they had stopped in that day for a few specialty items. When Gordon made his offer, Napolitano took the cash right away.
“500! Shut up,” he said on camera, almost in disbelief.
Gordon asked Napolitano why he chose the money. Napolitano explained that he’d recently lost his job and was behind on rent, and then he brought up Volkova’s illness.
“She’s not doing great,” Napolitano said in the video, adding that the money would go toward either rent or a wedding. “I really don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I’m gobsmacked.”
He let Volkova explain.
“I’ve been diagnosed with terminal stage 4 breast cancer for almost five years now,” she said. “It’s come with a lot of bumps in the road.”
Gordon promised them a wedding, then turned to the camera and spoke to his followers.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do this. I’ve got quite a large following on social media, and I’m literally asking for your guys’ help right now,” he pleaded. “If you’re in New York, a brand, a person or whatever you are, let’s make it happen.”
Gordon has come through on ambitious promises plenty of times before. In South Africa, he once promised a man with one leg that his followers would buy him a prosthetic. The man got one.
“I know the power of speaking things into existence,” Gordon said.
Volkova didn’t believe him initially.
“I was like, you’re kidding. There’s no way in a short period of time you could pull something off like this,” she said, speaking later with GLI. “And he proved us wrong.”
The mystery ring
A few days later, Gordon met Napolitano in Manhattan with another choice: $500, or a box holding a “mystery ring.” This time, he picked the box.
Volkova, meanwhile, waited at a nearby café for what felt like hours, “getting all caffeinated” and wondering what the two men were up to.
Soon enough, the three of them went together to Top of the Rock, where a security team walked them past a long line, and Napolitano proposed on the Skylift, the observation deck’s rising platform, while a crowd of tourists watched and cheered.
Volkova was shaking as Napolitano slipped the ring onto her finger.
It was technically their second engagement. The couple met as next-door neighbors in a Port Washington apartment complex in 2021, following Volkova’s divorce.
They began dating, got engaged in 2022 shortly before her diagnosis, and have considered themselves “fake married” ever since.
‘God’s been trying to take her since she was born‘
The cancer quickly took its toll on Volkova, causing two fractures in her spine and nearly leading to liver failure.
She was also pregnant with a daughter.
Volkova had spinal reconstruction surgery. But the cancer had reached the baby, and specialists told the couple that continuing the pregnancy would be “pure torture.” Napolitano said she had to give up the pregnancy to survive. They lost their daughter at five months.
Since then, the cancer has progressed three times. Volkova is now on her third line of treatment: a chemotherapy pill, a monthly injection and IV treatment every six months.
In June, scans showed new growth in her liver. But her doctors kept her on the same treatment, and by September, she said, the progression was gone.
“It just disappeared,” she said.
Napolitano isn’t surprised: “I call her the outlier, because she proves everybody wrong. God’s been trying to take her since she was born.”
He wasn’t joking.
Volkova was born with tetralogy of Fallot, a serious heart defect, and doctors in Kyrgyzstan, then a Soviet republic, weren’t able to perform the surgery to fix it.
Her mother refused to accept that. She entered her daughter in a lottery for a new heart surgery in the United States, but a little boy won the spot, and Volkova was put on the waitlist.
Then, the night before the boy was set to fly out, he died. Volkova’s mother got a call asking how fast she could pack and get her little girl to Moscow for a flight to America.
Volkova was 7 when she finally had the surgery. About three years later, her mother moved the family to the United States for good.
Volkova grew up to become a psychotherapist. Today, she speaks openly about living with a lifelong heart condition and stage 4 cancer, hoping to show people what the disease really looks like.
“Whenever I get the chance to really talk about what it is I’m going through, I’m so appreciative of that,” she said. “It gives me a platform to really show people what it looks like to be stage 4. We’re not all horrendously sickly looking and bald and on our deathbeds.”
Still, the uncertainty never goes away.
“I never know if it’s going to be my heart that’ll take me, or the cancer, or both,” she said. “Cancer does not give you a heads up that you are going to die, which is so scary when you have little children.”
‘I don’t want to be fake married’
For years, the couple has worn rings and called each other husband and wife. With everything going on, they weren’t sure a real wedding was possible. As Napolitano puts it, they’ve been “fake married.”
“I can’t imagine not being Mrs. Napolitano,” Volkova said. “It sounds so morbid, but when I pass, that’s what I would want on my tombstone. I don’t want to be fake married anymore to the man that is my soulmate.”
Sunday’s ceremony will be held outdoors in a heated garden. The heaters matter, because Volkova also copes with Raynaud’s syndrome, and her lips turn blue when she gets cold, she said.
Cocktail hour will be in a tent, and guests will head indoors for the reception. About 50 guests are expected, including Volkova’s older sister, who is flying in from Russia.
Gordon helped her pick out her gown. “It’s so beautiful. I’m completely in love with it,” she said.
Napolitano won’t see it until she starts down the aisle.
“We’re actually old school,” Volkova said. “He’s not to see me 24 hours before the wedding.”
Napolitano will wear an all-black tuxedo with an emerald-green tie and pocket square. Blue, the family’s whoodle, a wheaten terrier and mini poodle mix, will be there too.
So will Gordon, who just turned 26. The “kindness creator” will be filming for the millions of people waiting to see the wedding.
“They’re helping me make my dreams come true by helping people,” he said, adding that being there for Volkova and Napolitano has been “a privilege.”
Volkova said she and her fiancé “are just unbelievably grateful, unbelievably excited — and a little bit in awe at how quickly all of this came together.”
Besides the wedding, the GoFundMe is raising money for family trips and an education fund for the boys.
Volkova’s voice broke a bit when she talked about them.
“I can’t imagine not being here for my boys,” she said. “I might not be dancing at their weddings, but they allowed me to dance with them at mine.”
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Top: Peter Napolitano proposes to Elena Volkova at the Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center. The Port Washington couple will marry on Sunday at Rockefeller Center; the wedding is paid for by Wish Upon a Wedding (Instagram/@bigmankg_). Inset photo shows the couple meeting social media influencer Keegan Gordon (courtesy of GoFundMe).
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