Andy Lee and Rebecca Harding have opened up about their long-time coming engagement in a new interview with Stellar magazine.
Lee explained that he’d known “for a long time” that he wanted to marry Harding, who he has been dating for more than ten years.
“I think six, maybe to eight months [beforehand] was when I really started thinking about it. I think I knew for years. Then getting the ring, and hoping Bec liked it – that would have been the most nerve-racking part. And getting her there on time to the actual proposal,” he said.
The comedian said that after so long, his family and friends were just as surprised, “I had a mixture of: “It’s about time'” from people. And then there was the occasional: “Well, I thought you’d never do it.”‘
However, Harding admitted that over the years, the external pressure didn’t make it easier for the couple.
“Andy doesn’t like being told what to do. So in my mind, I was like, can everyone please stop pressuring him to propose? Because he’s not going to do it,” she told the magazine.
In the new interview, Harding confessed that she wondered whether the proposal would ever happen.
‘I mean, we’d been dating for 10 years, so I kind of was like, maybe getting married is not for us. There was enough in our life that I knew he was serious about me’ she told the magazine.
‘It’s such a nice feeling to know someone has gone and put all of this effort into something, to ask you to spend the rest of your life with them.’
After proposing, Lee took to his podcast, The Hamish & Andy Show to share the happy news, and delve into the details of the proposal itself.
“I asked Bec to marry me on Sunday,” he announced during the episode, to which co-hosts Hamish Blake and Jack Post were ecstatic.
He went on to detail exactly how he popped the question, which took place at the historic mansion the pair are currently renovating in Melbourne’s East.
Lee told Harding that they needed to film an Instagram reel at the property and, once there, he got down on one knee while pretending to grab something out of the marble fireplace.
Then, in a sweet nod to their first meeting at the coffee shop Harding was working at nearly 10 years ago, he held out a napkin.
“Because when I first met her at the café, I wrote on a napkin my details,” he explained.
This time around, the napkin read ‘Will you marry me?’ and was accompanied by a very impressive emerald diamond ring.
The couple took to Instagram hours later to share the news, with a series of loved-up snaps and the caption, “People keep saying we’ve rushed into this but we don’t care what people say!”
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year, the couple, who went public with their romance at the Australian Open back in 2015, recalled their first meeting.
“We met in a Richmond cafe. I was there writing stuff for the Logies, she was the waitress. She was attractive – but it was more her bubbly personality and how she wasn’t good at her job. She’d leave a table knowing about the person’s grandchildren or dog, but forget their order. I ordered cups of tea I never drank and eventually left a note on a napkin,” Lee explained.
They also detailed how they briefly split in 2016, which Lee described as “a really sad, tough time.”
Thankfully, this break was short-lived, and the pair came back stronger than ever.
We’ll be waiting patiently for details of what promises to be the wedding of the year.
