Minnesota teens who met in brain injury ICU get engaged

Zach Zarembinski proposed to Isabelle Richard at Regions Hospital in Saint Paul on Nov. 19, 2025, returning to the ICU where both had once been treated for life-threatening brain injuries. The engagement came during a visit to record an episode of their Hope in Healing Podcast, with family members and the hospital staff who had cared for them gathered nearby.

Their story began in 2018, when Zarembinski was 18 and playing football at Hill-Murray High School. After collapsing from his injury, he was rushed to Regions Hospital and placed in a coma that lasted a week. Less than two weeks later, Richard, then 16, was admitted after a car accident on her way to a grocery store job. She, too, was placed in a coma.

Both teenagers underwent surgery to remove portions of their skulls and relieve dangerous brain swelling, the kind of urgent intervention used when traumatic brain injury threatens life itself. Richard’s mother, Esther, later saw Zarembinski speaking at a news conference about his injury and his care, and the interview played in Richard’s hospital room. Esther reached out because his account offered reassurance at a moment when the family was trying to understand what survival would look like.

The two families stayed connected through Facebook for years after the accidents, a digital thread that kept the connection alive long after the ICU stays ended. Six years after the crashes and injury, the families met for dinner. Zarembinski asked Richard for her phone number that night, and the pair began dating.