The triumphant SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, and his wife, Pat, emerged with broad smiles on the staircase of the Guildhall in Derry, with their party colleagues applauding loudly behind them.
His overwhelming victory after the first count in Foyle, which saw him secure almost two quotas, was announced in the main counting hall to a relatively subdued response from party workers.
Minutes later the man of the moment appeared before the media in the foyer to raucous applause. Photographers fired a barrage of requests as Mr Hume was ushered on to a small stage bearing the results. "Put your arm around your wife there," they shouted. "Give her a kiss."
It was, after all, Mr Hume's day, not only in Derry but across Northern Ireland.
Softly spoken, he was modest about his own party's achievements and of his own success. He said he was "obviously very pleased and very grateful to the people of Derry".
Mr Hume and his wife had arrived at the Guildhall as the counting of first-preference votes began. He spoke of the end of violence and the beginning of the "healing process" as he stood solemnly in the foyer, on the very spot where a bomb exploded on June 12th, 1972.
The statue of Queen Victoria beside him still bore the scars of the bombing. Four days after that attack another device went off in the upper hall, where the counting took place yesterday. The Guildhall, which survived numerous other bombings in the 1970s and 1980s, appeared a fitting venue as journalists and count officials arrived amid talk of a "new politics" in Northern Ireland.
Sinn Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin became the first candidate to fall under the glare of the cameras as he arrived.
Just before 12.30 p.m. the first declaration was made by the returning officer, Bobby Dobbins, confirming an impressive 72 per cent turnout in Foyle. The counting of first preferences began, and shortly before 5 p.m. the election of Mr Hume was announced.
He said he looked forward to working with all parties in the Assembly which had supported the agreement. The SDLP would devote its energies to their "very substantial common interests".
As the scale of the SDLP's performance across the North became apparent, Mr Hume said the organisation had been a "very consistent party throughout the last 28 years" and that people in Northern Ireland had recognised that.
"It is a clear message that people are standing shoulder to shoulder with us," he said. In particular, he focused on the determination of voters to see an end to paramilitary violence. During the election campaign young people had voiced their desire for a peace, and this had been reflected in the vote.
"It was summed up for me by the young man from the Ash group at the U2 concert before the referendum. He said to me that he had lived through the Troubles all his life and had known nothing else and he did not want another generation growing up in that."