“This is going to be family lore from now on,” the girl’s grandmother said
Credit: Getty; Getty
NEED TO KNOW
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A Minnesota man lost his wedding ring in a lake near his family’s cabin in 2016
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Ten years later, his 9-year-old niece spotted it shimmering in the water
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“This is going to be family lore from now on,” the girl’s grandmother said
A man has been reunited with his lost wedding ring 10 years later thanks to a moment of serendipity.
Stephen Meyer lost the ring in 2016 while swimming with his son in Minnesota’s Lake Belle Taine, where his family has a cabin, per the Pioneer Press. The ring slipped off his finger and sank to the bottom of the lake.
Over the years, Meyer attempted to find the ring during his summer visits to the cabin. Family members also helped with the search.
“I looked a lot — I go swimming every night,” said Malana Johansen, Meyer’s mother-in-law, who owns the cabin. “We’ve spent a lot of time looking for that ring. We were dredging the sand. My neighbor gave me a big magnet. We could not find it.”
Then, on July 20, Meyer’s 9-year-old niece, Harper — who knew nothing about the lost ring — came for a visit at her grandmother’s cabin for the first time since she was a toddler. While standing along the shore of the lake, she suddenly saw a small, shimmering object in the shallow water.
Credit: Getty
“She just picked it up and said, ‘There’s a ring!’ ” Johansen recalled to the Pioneer Press. “The lake has gone down probably about 30 feet since last fall [due to drought conditions]. … It was still in the water, but she didn’t really have to go in the lake to reach it. It was just there.”
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The family was “speechless” over Harper’s find, considering they had searched in vain for the ring for a decade. Johansen was also amazed that the ring was in such “great shape” after all that time in the lake water.
“It just needed a little cleaning, but it looks gorgeous,” she said.
Meyer, who purchased a new ring after losing his original one, is now wearing both rings.
Johansen told the Pioneer Press that Harper’s triumph in finding the missing ring was a “wonderful” moment for her after a very difficult year. The 9-year-old’s family lost their home in Sierra Madre, Calif., during the wildfires in early 2025.
Credit: Getty
“She has gone through quite a lot in the last year,” Johansen explained. “To have this exciting thing happen — I think it’s just wonderful.”
The grandmother thinks Harper could have a potential summer job helping others find lost things.
“She wants to be a teacher, and she is going to be a fabulous teacher,” Johansen said. “But I told her, ‘Then in the summertime, you should just offer to find things for people.’ ”
As for the story of Meyer’s reclaimed ring, she said, “This is going to be family lore from now on.”
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