Matthew Broderick, Jerry Seinfeld photo in Montauk goes viral
It used to be a story Alex Cabana would break out every now and again at parties or retell during family gatherings. That time he didn’t recognize Jerry Seinfeld and asked the comedian to move over so he could get a photo of his daughter with Matthew Broderick.
But some stories are too good not to share.
Nearly a decade after he took the photo, it went viral last week after a friend shared it on Twitter, said Cabana, 42, of Queens. It was retweeted 20,000 times and featured online by New York magazine, Time and a handful of other publications.
Seinfeld even made light of the incident on Facebook Sunday. The comedian shared a photo of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album cover with himself Photoshopped onto the side with the caption: “I’m also in the Abbey Road photo if you look closely.”
Cabana took the picture in 2009 while on vacation with his family in Montauk, he said. His daughter, Nicole Cabana, then 7, was suffering from an ear infection at the time, so he went to a nearby pharmacy to pick up some medicine.
While waiting in line, Cabana bumped into Broderick and struck up a brief conversation with the “Ferris Bueller” star, even though he couldn’t immediately place the actor.
“I came out of the store and was thinking, ‘I know this guy. He looks famous.’ ” Cabana said.
Cabana, who works for the Department of Transportation, asked Broderick to take a photo with his daughter after Cabana’s father recognized Broderick. But as Broderick was posing with Nicole, a man hovered nearby and Cabana asked him to move to the side.
Cabana remembers Seinfeld shrugging and stepping aside, but not quite out of frame.
When he returned to the car where his wife and father were waiting, Cabana showed them the picture.
“My wife said, ‘Do you realize what you’ve done?’ ” Cabana recalled. “I just looked at the picture and I saw him. I’ve been watching this guy every night.”
Nicole Cabana, now 16, said she remembers her dad asking her to take a photo with Broderick, even though she didn’t know who the actor was at the time.
When she learned that the photo was drawing so much attention online she created a Twitter account to check it out.
“I was like, I’m viral,” she said.
Though the photo that was initially shared online has her face blurred out, that hasn’t stopped Nicole Cabana from telling her friends about her 15 minutes of fame, she said.
As for her father, he’s glad the story is now being shared so widely, after years of telling it himself.
“One of my friends said that it’s just like one of the Seinfeld episodes,” Alex Cabana said. “I told him, it really happened.”
Representatives for Broderick and Seinfeld did not return requests for comment.