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Millie Bobby Brown and her fiancé Jake Bongiovi are in the thick of wedding planning, and while they've given us small tidbits of what to expect, the couple has been relatively quiet about the Big Day.
The Stranger Things star previously said this was intentional, as she wanted to keep the process as private as possible. "There are only so many moments in life that you get only once. And to have everyone’s opinions and eyes looking at that just feels unnatural to me,” she told WWD last summer. “I feel it’s important to keep those things, those small precious moments in life, really close to your chest. I can say that the planning is going — it’s so fun and it’s such an exciting time in my life.”
But almost a year after the proposal in April 2023, Millie Bobby Brown is ready to share more with the public about the unexpected — and unforgettable – way Jake Bongiovi popped the question. During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, February 29, Brown reiterated her desire to keep “key moments” of her relationship private, but spilled new details to Fallon and the live audience because it's “too good of a story not to tell.” So let's begin: the proposal happened on a vacation.
"Jake and I bonded over diving. We love diving, we got our diving licenses together," Brown explained, saying Bongiovi told her to wake up at 8 a.m. one day on their trip to go on a dive. “I was like, ‘8 a.m., dive?’ And he’s telling me, ‘We’re going to the same spot we usually go to.'"
Brown wanted to try diving somewhere new, but Bongiovi persisted. When the couple dove in the water, Bongiovi handed her a shell. “I turn it over and it’s a ring. And I looked at him and he was like…” The actor recreated her fiancé's facial expression, given they were underwater and couldn't exactly talk. He gave her a thumbs up and she gave him an “okay” sign in return. “And I think it was underwhelming, but we freaked out," she laughed.
It gets better. “He puts the ring on my hand and as I go to show him, the ring falls off my finger, plummets so fast, it was like a cinematic movie,” Brown shared. “Jake threw himself so deep, the diver was like, ‘You can’t do that, like your ears... literally your brain will explode.’”
Thankfully Bongiovi did a “cinematic grab” and managed to save the ring. To Brown, the heroic gesture was meaningful. “It's a reflection of who he is and I feel like we’re always going to have each other's back and if anyone drops the ball, we got it.”
Turns out the underwater ring Bongiovi used to propose was only a placeholder, said Brown. Bongiovi had actually asked Brown's mother for her ring, but her mom said he could “absolutely not” take it on a dive; he later presented it to her when they were on dry ground with another proposal, this time with, you know, talking.
“When we got up on the boat he was like, ‘This is your mom’s ring and I got it from your parents,’” explained Brown. “And it was very magical and his parents were there and we just looked so disheveled coming out from a dive.” She was right: this story is too good not to share. Who else can't wait for the wedding? Watch Brown's entire interview on the The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon below:
