Pulling off a romantic proposal is no easy feat, but this lucky couple got just that with the help of Adele during her concert at Los Angeles’ Griffith Observatory.
The pre-recorded show was Adele’s first in four years, and it included a performance by the 33-year-old star and an interview with Oprah Winfrey. It was then aired on November 14 as a two-hour special on CBS dubbed “Adele One Night Only.”
At one point in the concert, Adele asked the audience to cooperate in carrying out the romantic surprise. She told them about a couple named Quentin Brunson, 31, and Ashleigh Mann, 33, who have been together for seven years.
Ashleigh is a vegan chef who recently booked her first big catering job—a win she celebrated on the day of the special with her then-boyfriend. The woman had no idea that the celebration wouldn’t end there.
Adele asked the crowd to be quiet, jokingly telling her audience—which included Lizzo, Oprah Winfrey, Selena Gomez, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Melissa McCarthy—“If you make a noise, I’m going to kill you.”
The lights were dimmed, and Quentin led a blindfolded Ashleigh onstage, who also wore noise-canceling headphones. The man then knelt down and asked Ashleigh to take off her blindfold.
Upon seeing her boyfriend on his knees, a surprised Ashleigh said, “Oh my God. What are you doing?” Getting choked up, she looked around and became even more shocked upon seeing a crowd of people watching them.
Quentin encouraged her to keep her eyes on him.
“I want to thank you for being so patient with me,” Quentin, still on his knees, told Ashleigh. “I am extremely proud of you. I mean, every day, you blow my mind. There’s absolutely nothing that you cannot do.”
Then, holding back tears, he continued:
“And I just know you’re going to be an amazing mother to our kids one day. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I will continue to love you forever. It’s been a long time coming. Will you marry me?”
When she said yes, the audience erupted in cheers and applause. Adele then emerged from the shadows into the spotlight, stunning Ashleigh yet again.
“Hello, Ashleigh,” she said before instructing the couple to sit in the front row next to Lizzo and Melissa McCarthy. The latter kindly offered an emotional Ashleigh tissue and a glass of champagne.
“Thank God she said yes, because I didn’t know who I was going to sing this song to next,” Adele joked.
The singer serenaded the newly-engaged lovers with her cover of Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” a track included on her debut album, 19. She stopped between two lines of the song to tease the new bride-to-be: “She’s crying her eyes out!”
On social media, Quentin lists Rochester as his hometown and Spencerport High School as his high school alma mater. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Syracuse University in 2013 and now lives in Los Angeles, where he works as a site director for Communities in Schools of Los Angeles.
Before the concert, the show’s producers had run an ad looking for people planning to propose. Quentin took his chance and submitted a one-minute video explaining why she and Ashleigh “deserved the opportunity.”
“And I just let them know I felt like it was, this opportunity was from God, for sure, because it was made for us. … I just knew that, if I submit to this, they’re gonna pick us because we just have so much to offer. And I’m just happy everything went the way it did,” he told CBS This Morning’s Gayle King.
Quentin didn’t even know that it was going to be an Adele concert until a couple of days before it happened, which worked for the better because knowing about it early on would make him more nervous.
Quentin arranged a date with Ashleigh on the date of the show, purportedly to celebrate her first major catering gig.
Ashleigh had been talking about visiting a pumpkin patch and thought they were going on a hayride, but they got to experience something way more special.
Not every couple could say they got engaged in front of Adele, and Quentin and Ashleigh are a few of the lucky ones!
See how Quentin’s romantic proposal played out in the video below.