Legendary lead guitarist Neal Schon from the rock group Journey got down on one knee during a performance in Baltimore on Sunday night and proposed to former Real Housewives of D.C. socialite Michaele Salahi.
The engagement ring Schon presented to Salahi on stage features an 11.42-carat oval diamond with a value pegged at more than $1 million.
TMZ reported that Schon was so nervous about losing the ring or having it stolen that he had it transported to his Baltimore Hotel just before the show in an armored vehicle.
The moment of the proposal was captured by a fan attending Journey's benefit concert for the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. In the video, Schon calls Salahi to the stage, and the statuesque 47-year-old blonde acts like a giddy teenager as the 58-year-old Schon gets down on bended knee, pulls out the impressive ring and asks for her hand in marriage.
As lead singer Arnel Pineda joins the couple on stage, the bride-to-be gallops to Pineda and hugs him, giving the vocalist the perfect lead in to the Journey staple, "Faithfully."
According to The Washington Post, Schon's plan was to propose just before the song "Faithfully." He also had a prepared speech.
“I had this whole thing I was going to do,” Schon said. But when he called Salahi on stage and got on one knee, the plan went awry. “I started crying,” he admitted.
Then Salahi started crying, too, and the audience went nuts.
“It was the biggest ‘yes’ ever!” she told the Post.
Besides being a cast member of The Real Housewives of D.C., a reality show that made its debut on the Bravo network in 2010 and ran for one year, Salahi is also famous for notoriously crashing a White House State Dinner with her former husband, Tareq Salahi, in 2009. The two were divorced in August of 2011.
In a romantic twist to the Schon/Salahi engagement, the rock star first spotted the striking blonde 16 years ago as she headed toward her seat at a Journey concert in D.C. Schon sent a crew member into the audience to invite her backstage after the show. She accepted the invitation and apparently the two spoke for hours.
After completing the current Journey tour at the end of November, the happy couple will head home to San Francisco to begin planning their wedding. This will be Salahi's second marriage. Schon is hoping that his fifth will be a charm.
Here's the video of the actual proposal, followed by Pineda singing "Faithfully."
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