Credit: Darla Khazei/INSTARimages
Dolores Catania and Paul “Paulie” Connell are engaged!
After nearly five years of dating, Paulie, 51, proposed to the 54-year-old Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member with an 11-carat engagement ring on Monday at the place they first met — an Apple store in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
“I’m ecstatic!” Dolores told PEOPLE on November 12. “You know when you feel that happiness down in your gut? That’s where this excitement stems from for me. I feel so blessed, I almost feel guilty! Like I don’t deserve to be loved this way.”
Paulie disagreed.
“I keep telling Dolores, she deserves that and so much more,” he stated. “She’s an incredible woman. And when I was proposing to her, I was able to articulate to her everything I see that she is, and everything I see that she does, and the impact she has on everybody around her. She’s one in a million.”
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While RHONJ fans have been waiting for an engagement for years, Dolores said Paulie’s decision to wait to get down on one knee was perfect.
“I’ve never been so sure of something ever,” she said. “You know, patience is a big thing for us. When we first met, Paul wasn’t used to being in the public eye; he wasn’t used to the pressure the audience can put on relationships. There were things in his life that he needed to sort through, and that took time. But even when things came up on the show, I never pushed Paul, because I wanted him to do the right thing on his own. And our bond is stronger now because of that. As a couple, we were able to naturally progress. So this engagement means more to us than it would if it was just something we were doing just for the sake of doing it.”
According to Paulie, proposing to Dolores was the “best decision” he’d ever made.
“[I] feel lucky to have Dolores in my life. She’s made me a better version of myself,” he stated.
As for his decision to propose at Apple, Paulie said he “didn’t want anything over-the-top and staged.”
“We’re a humble couple. I wanted it to feel grounded and natural and organic. Plus, I wanted the element of surprise. And believe me, I had the element of surprise,” he declared.
As Dolores admitted, she was completely clueless and thought she was headed to an interview about a new menopause medication.
“I had hair and makeup here and then halfway through, I was told the meeting was cancelled. So Paul said, ‘Oh great, we have time to go get your new iPhone now,'” she recalled, sharing that Paulie had wanted her to get to the store before BravoCon this weekend.
“I told her, ‘There’s only one iPhone Pro Max in the area right now, and they’re holding it for you so we have to go back to that f*cking store!'” Paulie explained. “And she was like, ‘Ahh, f*ck, fine!'”
Although she was annoyed at first, Dolores said the idea was “super sweet.” After all, as she reflected, “Both our phones were broke with the same things at the same time. And that’s how we started talking to begin with.”
After joking about how funny it would be if he and Dolores got engaged at the table where they were standing when they met, Paul said he began to think about his mother before asking for Dolores’ hand in marriage.
“I’m like, ‘What are you doing? Don’t start getting sad, you’re meant to be happy, this is a happy moment!'” he said.
Once Paulie pulled out the ring, which features an 11-carat stone surrounded by additional diamonds in silver from John Anthony Jewelers, Dolores “immediately” said, “Yes.”
“The whole thing was so sincere and so thoughtful. And then when I came home, there was over 1,000 roses [by Premiere Events by Reema] waiting for me. I mean, he really hit it out of the park,” she noted.
Looking back at a 2023 episode of RHONJ in which he claimed to “have the ring,” Paulie admitted that the one he proposed with was not the same.
“I had bought a stone early on into dating Dolores, thinking, ‘If we get engaged, I’ll use this.’ But then over the years of getting to know Dolores better, she started talking to me about what she liked and I realized, it was opposite of what I got. So I went back to the drawing board,” he explained.
While Paulie purchased Dolores’ engagement ring over a year and a half ago, he delayed giving it to her after her ex-husband, Frank Catania, got engaged to Brittany Mattessich and her son, Frankie Catania, Jr., proposed to his girlfriend, Nicole Perricho.
“I was like, ‘Get the f*ck out of here!'” he shared. “I kept saying to myself, ‘Maybe no one wants me to marry Dolores!?!'”
Luckily, after Frank and Frankie had their moment, Paulie got his, proposing to his longtime love on November 10, which was the anniversary of the day they moved in together four years ago.
“I’m telling you, there’s not a thing this guy didn’t think of,” Dolores exclaimed, adding that they celebrated their engagement with a meal at Rocco’s steakhouse, where they went on their first date.
As for the wedding, Dolores and Paulie don’t have any plans quite yet.
“I’d love to get married the day we got engaged, because November has always been a sentimental month for me, but we’re both so excited right now that we really want to enjoy this moment and absorb this all in,” Paul revealed. “Plus we have Frankie’s wedding coming up, we’re talking about moving into a new house, and of course, Dolores and I will want the wedding to be a perfect experience. So we’ll get there when the time is right.”
‘There’s no rush,” Dolores added. “The way we’ve set our life up, we can do things however and whenever we want to do them. and I don’t do things based on what people think I should do. I’ve never done that. Just ask my friends!”