Shaun White made a few different plans to propose to Nina Dobrev—but they kept being thwarted. The first, during their summer vacation, was scrapped after Nina injured her knee in a dirt-biking accident. Then, he thought about early November, when they were in Cape Town for The Earthshot Prize Ceremony. But he could tell that Nina thought it might happen in South Africa—because, well, all her friends kept asking if it was going to happen. And here’s the thing about Nina, says Shaun: 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: the 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 wouldn’t find it—first into the safe, then his sock drawer, and eventually, all the way in the back of the tool shed. (“The garage?” Nina exclaims when Shaun tells me his hiding spot. He shrugs: “I was like, She’s not coming out here.”)
A few days before he was set to pop the question, Nina told him she wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to rest up 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 for an intimate CFDA/Vogue dinner with Anna Wintour at the Golden Swan in New York City. Nina accepted. “He made the invite look so legitimate,” Nina says, laughing.
Photo: Andrew Arthur
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