Paraplegic man and fiancee announce pregnancy with ‘It still works!’

A monkey in a shearling coat gazing pensively out an Ikea window. A mom in a Chewbacca mask laughing hysterically.

Now you can add this to the list of magical moments that have gone viral: A Northwood High School graduate and her fiancé, super-stoked that “It still works!”

To announce they are having a baby, Amanda Diesen, 25, and Todd Krieg, 24, scrawled “It still works!” in chalk on a brick wall behind them and then had a friend snap a photo of them standing in front of the message. Diesen is laughing and holding an ultrasound snap of their fetus. Krieg, in a wheelchair, is giving a thumbs-up and a big grin.

The couple shared the shot with family and friends on Facebook and Instagram in February. One of Diesen’s former co-workers then posted it on Reddit and — boom.

“It blew up big time,” Krieg says, getting millions of likes and thousands of comments.

As the denizens of the web gobbled up their feel-good story, UsWeekly, People Magazine and Huffington Post came calling, along with the TV cameras.

It turns out their backstory is as sweet as their photo.

Diesen graduated from Northwood High in Irvine in 2010. After getting her bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, she waited tables at Fig and Olive in Newport Beach for a year before finding a job at Project Walk Paralysis Recovery Center in Carlsbad.

A few weeks later, Krieg arrived from Ohio for rehab. His dirt bike had stalled mid-jump on a practice track and he landed on his head, breaking two important vertebrae. At the age of 21, he was paralyzed from the chest down.

Diesen was among the therapists assigned to work with him, but it wasn’t until a Halloween house party for Project Walk staff and clients that things heated up.

Someone asked Krieg who his favorite therapist was, and, having had one too many Captain Morgan shots, he blurted out, “Amanda!”

In front of Amanda.

“She’s so hot,” he then slurred.

Wait, what?

Diesen thought he was “a babe.” She had no idea he felt the same about her.

Now that the secret was out, though, the two started talking. Then dating. Krieg told her his backstory.

He had been riding dirt bikes since he was 5, turned pro at 18 and was about to sign on with a Honda racing team when he crashed.

“For some reason I had a sense of calmness,” he remembers of the moment it happened. “I wasn’t freaking out.”

When he woke up four days later in the hospital, he didn’t wallow.

“This is the hand that I’ve been dealt,” he remembers thinking. “It’s time to learn how to deal with it and move on. There wasn’t any ‘Why me?’ ”

Even though he is, to this day, in physical pain.

Diesen had some big decisions to make.

“Sadly, at first I cared about what people would think, being with someone in a wheelchair,” she admits. “But it wasn’t enough to stop me.”

The two became best friends. They talked about the future. And kids. The doctors had told Krieg it was very unlikely he could be a father naturally.

“But with any able-bodied couple, having kids could be an issue,” Diesen says. “It could have been me who had fertility problems. Or if I didn’t take a chance on Todd, I could have ended up with someone who didn’t want or couldn’t have kids.”

They decided they were soulmates, kids or no kids. Then this past December they were at a friend’s house when the topic turned to babies. Diesen told Krieg on the way home she was “late.” Just for fun they stopped to buy a pregnancy test on the way home. And — bingo.

In addition to bumping Diesen’s Instagram following from 900 to 13,000, their “It still works!” photo has flashed on TV screens as far flung as France, South Africa, Italy and Chile. It’s also scored them lots of baby swag.

“Stuff is pouring in like crazy,” says Krieg. “We got clothes, bottles, blankets, strollers, a car seat, a bunch of baby shoes, diapers — a bunch of cool stuff. It was sweet.”

Food Network celebrity Rachael Ray had a Skype conversation with them on her daytime talk show and gave them a $1,000 gift card to Buy Buy Baby.

“I was like, ‘Heck yeah!’ ” says Krieg, who now works in billing at a construction company.

They also got a few offers for their own reality TV show. But then a German TV crew flew here to film them just for one day.

“It was like, ‘Holy cow, that was exhausting,’ ” Krieg says. “It would be miserable to do a TV show. We just want to live our normal lives. We blew up for a week or two; I can’t imagine having that for years and years.”

What fans of their viral photo might not know is that there was a second photo snapped that day. It shows Krieg surprising Diesen with a diamond ring and asking her to marry him.

The couple now are living in a home near his family outside of Cleveland. But a wedding is in the works for Orange County next summer.

And the couple await the birth of their baby boy, due Aug. 6.

Do they have any big plans for the birth announcement?

Diesen laughs. “No. Just a normal picture.”

LORI BASHEDA is a contributor to TimesOC.