The Valley stars Kristen Doute and Luke Broderick are engaged after two years of dating, Us Weekly can exclusively confirm.
Broderick popped the question on a boat in Maui, Hawaii, earlier this week. He told Doute, 41, to keep an eye out for dolphins while he got down on one knee at sunset.
“It was a total surprise,” Doute exclusively tells Us of the romantic moment.
The reality star and James Mae founder confesses that she couldn’t contain her surprise and blurted out some expletives when she saw Broderick with the ring, which he picked out with the help of good friend Kyle Chan. The groom-to-be worked with the jeweler to design a 14K white gold, 4.27 carat Emerald cut diamond, plus a half carat worth of diamonds on the band and hidden halo.
According to the couple, the hidden halo setting represents the “love around the center diamond, ‘Kristen.'”
“I knew from the moment we met that Luke was my person,” Doute gushes to Us. “I am so excited to continue this journey together, now as fiancés.”
Doute went public with the relationship in December 2022, revealing that she and Broderick connected at a friend’s June 2022 wedding while serving as a bridesmaid and groomsman, respectively.
Despite their instant chemistry, Doute was hesitant to pursue a romance with Broderick due to their eight-year age difference, their distance from each other (he was living in Colorado while she resided in California) and his hunting hobby.
“I battled with being, like, your person. I love you so much, but just the thought of being someone’s girlfriend again threw me through a loop because I want to be a wife and I want to be a mother,” the Vanderpump Rules alum explained. “Most of all, I just want to be a mother and a partner. And I was so tired of being a girlfriend for a couple of years and then having s—t fall apart.”
Broderick added: “You tried really hard not to fall in love with me and not to let this become a thing because of my age, because of the distance, because of these factors that when you think about it logically, like, how can this work?”
Less than a year later, Doute divulged that she and Broderick wanted to start their family in the near future. “A couple of months ago, Luke and I talked about the fact that we are in a very committed relationship. I did go to my OBGYN and we got all good news on that front,” she said during an October 2023 episode of the duo’s podcast. “So whenever we are ready to start trying, so far it looks good.”
While Doute noted that she had concerns about conceiving because she is in her 40s, she was not in a rush to have a child.
“My psychic [told me last year] that I had a boy waiting on the other side for me but that I was not going to get pregnant when I was 40. It was going to be somewhere between 41 and 42,” she shared. “That’s when we truthfully started talking about our plans to try. I decided not to put pressure on myself because I believe my psychic. I am not going to worry about having a baby in 2023.”
Doute and Broderick took the next step in their relationship earlier this year when they began costarring on Vanderpump Rules‘ spinoff The Valley. The show premiered in March and was renewed for season 2 in May.
While several of their castmates split after the debut season — Brittany Cartwright filed for divorce from Jax Taylor last month and Jesse Lally and Michelle Lally also called it quits before the episodes aired — Doute and Broderick moved into a house at the start of season 2 filming.
