George Clooney Says Proposing to Wife Amal Was a "Disaster"

When George Clooney asked Amal Clooney to be his wife, the romantic gesture didn’t exactly pan out like he envisioned it. On an episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, which aired on Friday, October 21, 2022, George told the story about how he proposed to the human rights activist in April of 2014. “It was a disaster,” the Ticket to Paradise star admitted. “I planned it out. I planned the whole thing out.”

George explained that once “Why Shouldn’t I” by Rosemary Clooney started playing at home, he asked the barrister to grab a lighter from the kitchen drawer, which was where he stashed the ring. But, when she found it, her reaction wasn’t what George expected. “She sees the ring in the drawer and pulls it out,” The Descendants actor recounted. “She says, ‘There's a ring there,’ like somebody left a ring there years earlier, and I am on my knee, and now the song is playing, and we know exactly how long [the proposal] took because of the playlist.”

Amal took her time to respond, and after 20 minutes of George kneeling down, she finally gave an answer. “She didn't say yes ’til ‘Goody Goody,’ but that was supposed to be later when we were dancing,” George continued. Even though the proposal took longer than expected, it ended up working out. “She kept saying, 'Oh my God, oh my God,’” George told host Drew Barrymore. “She said, ‘Oh, yes,’ and then she said, ‘Yes, thank God.’ So, I pulled it off.” 

During the episode, The American star also reflected on the first time he met Amal in July of 2013 when she came to his Lake Como home with a mutual friend. “The funniest thing is Bryan Lourd, my agent, called me,” George began. “He had just met Amal at some other thing, and she was like, ‘Yeah, I am going to go to Como with a friend of mine,’ and he called me up and he said, ‘There's a girl coming to your house that you are going to marry.’”

At first, George wasn’t buying it. “I was like, ‘You're an idiot,’” the actor narrated. “‘You know that's not going to happen.’ Then, in comes Amal, and we stayed up all night talking, and I started writing her a bunch of letters.”

Five months after their engagement, the couple tied the knot in Venice, Italy, with a star-studded guest list. The pair are now parents to two children, twins Alexander and Ella.