PHEW! Valeriya Shevchenko and Dmitriy Grif are married yesterday after Tuesday’s drama (above). (AFP/Getty Images)
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The earthquake turned her into a runaway bride — and nearly destroyed her dream day.
Valeriya Shevchenko, whose panicked scramble from the evacuated Municipal Building during Tuesday’s earthquake was captured in a dramatic photo, was terrified her wedding would become a casualty of the natural disaster.
“I was so worried it wouldn’t happen,” Shevchenko, 18, told The Post yesterday from her Brooklyn home, where she and hubby Dmitriy Grif, 19, were still in shock over the wild day.
Shevchenko’s downtown drama began at about 2 p.m. when she and a friend arrived at the City Clerk’s Office and anxiously waited for her fiancé.
When the tremors struck, she said, “They told us to leave the building. I didn’t feel anything, so I was saying, ‘What’s going on?’ ”
When a security officer said it was an earthquake, Shevchenko hitched up her new David’s Bridal gown and took off running, veil flying behind, to find Grif.
4.5-MAGNITUDE AFTERSHOCK REGISTERED IN VIRGINIA
The picture of the bolting bride — clutching her cellphone in one hand and a bouquet of roses and dandelions in the other — was beamed around the world.
“They said they had stopped the train — and my husband was on the train,” said Shevchenko. “I ran all the way to Chambers and Broadway in my wedding dress and with my long veil to make sure he was OK.
“I kept calling, but his phone was dead. I couldn’t reach him. I was so worried!”
When she reached the corner, Grif was emerging from the subway.
“She was frantic,” said Grif. “She was upset.”
“Then I saw him with flowers in a suit,” said his bride. “And I thought he looked so handsome.”
After exchanging kisses in front of onlookers, the pair headed back to City Hall, worried that they wouldn’t be able to get hitched.
“But I saw that people were getting married again,” she said. The pair exchanged vows just after 3 p.m.
“As we were walking down the street yesterday, people asked if we caused [the earthquake],” Grif said, laughing. “People say our love caused it.”
By yesterday, the new bride was more worried about “aftershocks” than the earthquake — because they had kept their wedding a secret from their disapproving families.
“His mom is going to go crazy,” said Shevchenko, who says her new mother-in-law doesn’t like her.
“She won’t be happy.”
The bride, who was born and raised in Ukraine, is living with an aunt and uncle in Manhattan Beach while she studies biology at Kingsborough Community College, and hadn’t clued them in, either.
“My relatives don’t know yet,” she admitted. “They’d say we’re too young and not for each other.”
Russian-born Grif, a Stuyvesant HS grad now studying biochemistry at SUNY Stony Brook, still lives with his parents.
The newlyweds went back to their respective family homes after the wedding — but figure their secret won’t keep long.
“Her picture is everywhere. Everyone is calling her the ‘Earthquake Bride,’ ” Grif said of his new wife.
The bride first met her husband during a 2009 visit to the United States and returned here for college to be near him.
“We’ve been together so long. We’re very in love,” she said.
Additional reporting by David Seifman