Rachel Uchitel recalled a painful period in her life Wednesday as she marked the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
The 49-year-old podcast host, who was infamously revealed to be Tiger Woods’ ex-lover, paid tribute to her late fiancé James Andrew O’Grady, who died when 2 World Trade Center collapsed on the morning of September 11, 2001.
“23 years ago, I lost the love of my life, Andy O’Grady,” Uchitel began in the caption of her Instagram post, which included an emotional video with footage from shortly after the terrorist attack.
Uchitel was just 26 in the video, which showed her holding “missing” signs with the smiling face of her fallen fiancé, contrasting with her shocked demeanor.
“This is my fiancé. I had planned my whole future with this person,” she said, trying to hold back tears.
Rachel Uchitel, 49, marked the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and remembered her late fiancé Andy O’Grady, who died when World Trade Center Building 2 collapsed; pictured in 2014
“23 years ago, I lost the love of my life, Andy O’Grady,” Uchitel began in the caption of her Instagram post, which included an emotional video with footage from shortly after the terrorist attack.
“If I don’t find him, I’ll have to start over. It’s taken me a lifetime to find him,” she continued as tears began to fall. “And I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”
After a pause, he looked at his flyers and continued, “Please, please help me find him.”
Uchitel then included the famous New York Post cover that showed a photo of her crying taken at the same time as she clutched her lost flyers.
“The tragic face of New York,” read the headline.
But he concluded the video by putting Andy center stage. He flashed a winning smile in tender photos taken years before his death, including cute snaps of him and Rachel together.
The video, which was soundtracked by heartbreaking piano music, concluded with a simple text that included her name and life expectancy: “May 9, 1969 – September 11, 2001.”
O’Grady, a New Jersey native, was a competitive swimmer at UCLA from 1988 to 1991, rising to become co-captain of the swim team as a senior before staying on for another year as a graduate assistant.
After college, he returned to the East Coast and worked as a managing director at the investment banking firm Sandler O’Neill & Partners, which had an office on the 104th floor of 2 World Trade Center.
Andy and Rachel had gotten engaged on August 5, 2001, and had planned to marry on May 4, 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times.
O’Grady had only been in his office for 45 minutes when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
“If I don’t find him, I’ll have to start over. It’s taken me a lifetime to find him,” she continued as tears began to fall. “And I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”
Uchitel’s sobbing face was later used for a famous New York Post cover. He concluded his video with smiling images of Andy
His building would be hit 17 minutes later, but it would be the first to collapse.
In his Instagram caption, Uchitel recalled that he had to watch the images of the towers’ impact as part of his work at Bloomberg News.
After his death, Uchitel recalled calling him shortly after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, and he told her that no one was being evacuated from the building at the time.
Things got worse when she called him later that morning.
“Rachel, it’s chaos in here,” she recalls him saying. “You don’t understand. I just saw someone jump out the window.”
In her Instagram caption, she wrote: “I remember watching his building come down and not being able to catch my breath. I remember the entire newsroom going silent. They had all watched me watch Andy die.”
Although she and others had hoped that he might somehow survive, she could see that “there was no hope.”
“The desperation of not knowing was beyond words,” he added.
“This event completely changed my identity. I had been searching for the man who was ‘my one’ all my life and I had finally found him and we were planning our wedding, and then this…” Uchitel continued.
He was a competitive swimmer at UCLA who returned to the East Coast to work as a managing director at the investment banking firm Sandler O’Neill & Partners, which had an office on the 104th floor of 2 World Trade Center.
Uchitel previously said he spoke to O’Grady by phone several times after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
“It was the honor of my life to have been loved by James Andrew O’Grady,” Uchitel concluded. “I am grateful that, thanks to the photo that appeared on the front page of almost every newspaper in the world looking for him, more people know his name”; seen in 2010
He added that he could still remember Andy’s “smile” and “voice” to this day.
Rachel shared that the video of her searching for Andy had been filmed outside Bellevue Hospital, as she had rushed there after hearing that he might have been taken there alive.
“I can see in this video the pain that I have never been able to shake off, because of how wonderful this man was,” she wrote. “I remember the incredible amount of letters and calls from complete strangers after this photo appeared in newspapers around the world.
“It was the honor of my life to have been loved by James Andrew O’Grady,” Uchitel concluded. “I am grateful that, thanks to the photo that appeared on the front page of almost every newspaper in the world looking for him, more people know his name.”
