Backstreet Boy Howie Dorough and his longtime chica, Leigh Boniello, announced their engagement. They plan to tie the knot later this year.
“She wasn’t expecting it, and I was quite nervous – more nervous about proposing to her in front of 40 family and friends than about performing in front of 40,000 people onstage,” Dorough says of his New Year’s Eve proposal at Boniello’s family home in New Jersey.
The couple, who are both 33, met in 2000, when Boniello who is a film-exec- turned-real-estate-broker, worked as the Backstreet Boys’ Webmaster.
The lovebirds said they were “very careful” to keep their engagement private at first, but with the wedding looming close, felt it was finally time to share their happy news. “We’re very, very excited,” says Dorough.
He carefully planned the proposal to his “soulmate” and checked out “at least 40 or 50 diamonds” before he prepared his “Will you marry me?” speech while they were both on an annual benefit cruise. (The trip was to support the Dorough Lupus Foundation, founded in honor of his late sister.)
“And I asked her mother, father and grandmother for their permission,” he adds.
“He decided to pull a practical joke on me in front of my whole family,” Boniello says of the big day. “He acted like he forgot to give me one present for Christmas – it was in a large box.”
He played off the inside joke that Dorough was “dangling carrots” in front of Boniello whenever they talked about marriage during their 6-year relationship, so when she opened the box, she found three large carrots inside.
“She was laughing and trying to tell everyone the joke and by the time she turned around I was down on one knee with the real carrot,” says Dorough.
Dorough, who is from Orlando, designed the engagement ring – one round, brilliant-cut diamond surrounded by two smaller round diamonds, all set in platinum – with a family friend at Plantation Jewelers in Winter Garden, Fla.
“It meant a lot for my whole family to hear it,” she says. “The room was filled with love, more than I ever expected.”
The wedding guest lists is for around 250 guests while the Backstreet Boys, currently promoting their new single “Inconsolable,” prepare to release their sixth studio album on Oct. 30.
“We’ve invited all the Backstreet Boys, including Kevin [Richardson],” says Dorough, who has no hard feelings about Richardson’s departure from the group last summer. “Actually, Kevin was one of the first people I told about our engagement.”
The stork should be visiting them soon:
“Hopefully I will be the next one to add to the [Backstreet Boy] family,” says Dorough