George Clooney: It Took 25 Minutes for Amal to Say Yes When He Proposed
The actor recalls the moment he popped the question to his now-wife.
— -- George Clooney said he knew within six months after meeting his future wife Amal that he wanted to marry her.
The 54-year-old actor shared with Ellen DeGeneres the moment he proposed to the British-Lebanese human rights lawyer, 38, and why it took her 25 minutes to realize what he was actually doing.
"I think it was about six months until I actually thought I might pop the question, and it was one of those horrible moments -- we didn't talk about it. It wasn't like, 'Oh, maybe we should get married,' or anything. I plotted the whole thing out," Clooney told DeGeneres on her show. "I had the ring hidden behind her. I had music playing -- my Aunt Rosemary's gonna sing 'Why Shouldn't I?' Everything was planned out and I've cooked dinner."
Amal, who had just returned from London, suggested to Clooney that they order in.
"And I go, 'No, no, no. I've made dinner.' I've got it all set up, timed out, and the song is coming and she gets up to go wash the dish -- which she's never done," he recalled with a laugh. "And I'm like, 'What are you doing?'"
When she's finally finished, Clooney has blown out the candle and asks Amal to hand him the lighter in a box behind her.
"She reaches around and she pulls out the box and I've got just the ring sitting in there," he recalled. "And she pulls it out and she looks at it and she's like, 'It's a ring.'" Like somebody had left it there some other time! I don't know. I'm doing all the moves you can do with my face."
But Amal still had no clue.
Then, Clooney recalled, "I got down on my knee and said, 'I couldn't imagine spending the rest of my life without you.' And she kept looking at the ring and she was looking at me and she was like, 'Oh, my God.' And we now know, because there was a playlist, so we know how long it actually took, and it was like 25 minutes.
"Finally, I literally said, 'Look, I hope the answer's yes, but I need an answer. I'm 52 and I could throw out my hip pretty soon,'" he continued. "And she said, 'Oh, yes.'"
The pair wed in Venice in September 2014. "It worked out really well," Clooney said.
"It was one of those funny things," he said. "From the minute we met we just hit it off. From the minute we met, we sort of felt like we were gonna be together."