Dolores Catania and her fiancé, Paulie Connell, are still riding high on their recent engagement, but the duo revealed that the moment didn’t exactly go off without a hitch.
The newly betrothed pair sat down with Tamra Judge and Teddi Mellencamp for the Thursday, November 13, episode of the “Two Ts in a Pod” podcast and shared some behind-the-scenes details of their big moment. Apparently, Connell, 51, was so nervous that Catania, 54, was worried something was wrong.
“You were sweating, you were saying things — like, I’ve been around people that are like that, and you were saying things that didn’t make sense to me,” the Real Housewives of New Jersey star recalled. “So, I was more worried about your health in the moment, and I knew what you were saying was everything I wanted to hear.”
According to Connell, the reason he was so stressed was because he’d asked ChatGPT for advice on how to pull off a successful proposal — and he was trying to keep all the instructions straight in his head.
“ChatGPT was a disaster for me that day,” he quipped. “What I was looking up was like, ‘How to get your speech across meaningfully.’ [It said] like, ‘Make eye contact, don’t hold her hands straight away, don’t kneel down, stand up.’ And I’m f***ing — it’s like, do you ever take a golf swing? Six thousand things go through your head. As I’m standing in front of you, I’m like, ‘Get down, stay up, talk, don’t talk, like, go grab her hand, make eye contact as I’m trying to talk to you.’ That’s probably why you thought I was having a stroke.”
Connell popped the question at the Apple Store in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, on Monday, November 10, after nearly five years with Catania. While the location may seem odd, the couple confirmed that it has special meaning for them because it’s where they met.
Catania, for her part, said on Thursday that the most important part of the day was Connell’s words.
“What meant more to me is the things that you said to me before you got down on one knee,” she explained. “Because I don’t hear those things from you ever. Although I [feel] them, but sometimes, you need to hear them.”
Dolores Catania is excited to officially welcome her son Frankie Jr.’s girlfriend, Nicole Perricho, into their family. “It was a lot of fun,” the Real Housewives of New Jersey star, 54, exclusively told Us Weekly of the couple’s recent proposal while promoting her, Teresa Giudice and Shannon Beador’s upcoming Fans at Sea Wives on the […]
She then asked Connell to repeat what he said so she could hear it again while she was “calm” — and without worrying about his health.
“I basically told you how important you were to me, how you’ve made me elevate as a person and how much of a better person you’ve made me, and how my life has become so much better from meeting you,” he recalled. “I also told you about my children, how they feel towards you, how I feel towards your kids, how you’ve made me one part of your family. And when I spoke to your family even before this went down, like, just the stuff they said to me just reassured me — like, you are a part of this family, like, this is real.”
Dolores shares daughter Gabby and son Frankie with ex-husband Frank Catania, whom she divorced in 1998. Paulie, meanwhile, shares sons Kameron and Brooklyn with ex-wife Joanne Connell.
