Nina Dobrev and Shaun White are engaged! Inside their oh-so New York City proposal story

Shaun White made a few different plans to propose to Nina Dobrev – but they kept getting thwarted. The first, during their summer vacation, was scrapped after Nina injured her knee in a dirt bike accident. Then he thought of early November, when they were in Cape Town for The Earthshot Prize Ceremony. But he could tell Nina that thought it can happen in South Africa – because, well, all her friends kept asking if it would happen. And here’s the thing about Nina, Shaun says: She’s an extremely organized person who is rarely surprised, but she loves being surprised. He had to surprise her.

So White decided to propose on an otherwise mundane week in late October. He had it all set up: date, location (The Golden Swan restaurant in New York City), flowers, a photographer. For weeks, he moved Nina’s future five-carat Lorraine Schwartz ring around their home so she couldn’t find it—first into the safe, then his sock drawer, and finally the very back of the tool shed. (“The garage?” Nina exclaims when Shaun tells me his hiding place. He shrugs, “I was like, She’s not coming out here.”)

A few days before he was supposed to pop the question, Nina told him she wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to rest before Africa and didn’t want to go out – at all – until they left. But this time he refused to reschedule. Instead, he decided to do something drastic. He had his publicist send Nina a fake invitation to an intimate CFDA/Vogue dinner with Anna Wintour at the Golden Swan in New York City. Nina accepted. “He made the invitation look so legit,” Nina says, laughing.

Photo: Andrew Arthur