Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
PROVO — A group of college students in Provo say they never would have imagined that buying a rubber duckie-themed baby cross-stitch art at a thrift store would lead to new friends, long overdue reunions, a yearly tradition and a slightly cult-like following.
Brigham Tingey and his roommates were looking to spruce up their apartment, and "being poor and also wanting something a little weird and eclectic, we went to (Deseret Industries)."
The friends found a cross-stitch baby announcement for "Ty Christopher" that included his birthday and birth weight surrounded by ducks floating on water.
"We had a good laugh to ourselves. Our first thought was, 'What's the story behind donating this?'" Tingey recalled. "We figured no one else would be likely to purchase that and head home with it, so if anyone was going to do it, it was going to be us."
So on that fateful day in the fall of 2020, the friends bought the framed cross-stitch art for $2.50 and proudly took it home to hang on their wall.
"We hung it up in a pretty obvious location, but there's enough weird stuff on our walls, it took a little bit of attention to detail for people to notice it," Tingey said.
When people would ask about the cross-stitch art, they'd just say it was a friend and wouldn't elaborate — but on the inside, Ty Christopher was becoming important to the roommates and they even used his name as their Wi-Fi password for a time.
As the days got closer to Ty Christopher's birthday on March 1, the roommates decided they needed to do something to celebrate their mystery friend's big day. So they invited everyone they knew to a "surprise birthday party" for their friend who they said was moving to Provo from Arizona.
The 30 people who showed up to the party grew increasingly confused as they hid behind couches waiting to yell surprise for someone who wouldn't be coming. Tingey and his friends pretended to be checking Ty Christopher's location until they finally pulled out a cake and started singing to the cross-stitch display.
"After we sang the song, there were still plenty of questions and people confused about what the heck was going on," Tingey said while laughing. "We explained and I think most people thought it was funny and not a complete waste of time."
"That was the first annual. From that point, we knew that it had become a tradition," Tingey added. "We've just celebrated it every year."
As the friend group expanded through some of them getting married, they started doing a white elephant gift exchange during Christmas. Whoever ended up with the cross-stitch art was responsible for hosting the next year's event.
During the 2023 birthday party, the Ty-squad played a Kahoot trivia game about Ty with facts that they made up. Afterward, they got curious and got serious about searching the internet to try to find their friend, but came up empty.
The Ty-maniacs thought they might've cracked the case when they found a matching Facebook account for Jill Romney, the woman who made the cross-stitch art and wrote a note on the back of the frame. But the account hadn't been active for years and the roommates never received a message back after they reached out to her.
So the friends continued in their obsession with Ty Christopher, knowing they most likely would never solve the mystery — or learn his last name.
A year unlike any other
This year, the Ty-fanatics — who have all mostly graduated from college at this point — wanted to go big and decided to celebrate by filming an entire movie in one day.
The result was a one-hour film titled "My Ty: An American Story" that was "unhinged," packed with inside jokes, filled with countless plot holes and ended with a resolution that Ty is more than just a person: He is an idea and represents friendship, Tingey said.
On March 13, about 25 people got together dressed in black "Ty" apparel to walk a red carpet at a duck-themed movie premiere.
In honor of the first year's surprise party, Tingey turned the lights off and everyone counted down to what they thought would be the start of the movie. Instead, Tingey had arranged for a surprise reveal of Ty Christopher Nelson himself.
"There was stunned silence," Tingey recalled after Nelson walked in. Some attendees made the connection while others were politely clapping and wondering what was going on.
After Nelson, 33, introduced himself and people started to figure it out, Tingey said everyone "freaked out for a little bit. After we finally got over ourselves, 20 minutes or so later we started the movie," which had been secretly edited to include footage of Nelson being located.
Unbeknown to most of the attendees, Tingey and his wife happened to solve the mystery just days before the premiere.
Through a series of fortunate events and Tingey's brother-in-law and friend discovering a mutual friend who knew the Romneys, Tingey was connected with Romney and learned she was a close friend of the Nelson family 30 years ago before her family moved to Texas.
Romney contacted Nelson's mother, who vetted the college students to make sure they weren't going to do anything crazy to her son, then gave Nelson's number to Tingey.
"I called Ty and we were able to have a conversation about the cult following he's had for the last couple years. Luckily, he didn't file a restraining order and he agreed to come to the premiere," Tingey said.
Nelson said he felt like "an awkward celebrity" at the premiere, but he thought it was a fun event where he got reunited with his cross-stitch art. And he, fortunately, was not creeped out by a bunch of admirers celebrating his birthday without him knowing.
"My first reaction was this is 100% something I would have done," Nelson said. "This is hilarious and I loved it. I loved the story and thought it was super cool what they did."
When he was in college, Nelson and his roommates did something similar on a much smaller, less "epic" scale, where they got a family frame from Deseret Industries and photoshopped their faces onto the picture, he said.
Nelson said it's still a mystery how his cross-stitch display ended up at the Deseret Industries store, but he assumes it accidentally got donated during one of the six moves he and his wife went through since their college days.
"How long it was there before Brigham and his roommates picked it up? I don't know," Nelson said.
Through the wild story connecting Nelson with his devotees, Nelson's mom and Romney have reconnected over several hourlong phone calls and Romney has plans to fly out for the next birthday party.
"The tradition is whoever has the cross-stitch hosts the party, so the party will be at the Nelsons next year," Nelson said during an interview, to which all of the Ty-guys cheered. Tingey added that his friends from Arizona who got invested in the story are planning to fly out to the party, too.
While the whole thing started out as a joke, Tingey is grateful for the experience that brought people together.
He and his roommates' friendship actually started with a similar situation where a group of kids at their school were having a concert for the band they formed. Tingey's group decided to "make it a super big deal" by telling everyone they knew — and people they didn't know — about the concert and making and selling around 80 T-shirts to support the local band.
Tingey said although both that high school band concert and the crazy cross-stitch story started out as just a funny, silly idea, they "turned into something a lot bigger," produced massive benefits in the end and began lifelong friendships.
