According to Page Six, Billy Ray Cyrus, 65, proposed to Elizabeth Hurley, 61, after more than a year of dating, days after she posted a selfie flaunting a massive diamond and he shared a cryptic ring emoji that Hurley's son Damian liked with a celebratory one. The announcement lands as Cyrus promotes a NASCAR show in Phoenix, which he says "kinda has a ring to it."
The engagement broke in three soft hits, the way a product launch works now: the diamond selfie on Monday, the ring emoji on Thursday, and the future stepson's celebratory like as the final act. Nobody held a press conference. Everybody ran a story. The whole soft launch is already known as the Phoenix Ring, because of the NASCAR pun, which is the only press quote in this story that writes itself.
Best detail: the Page Six source pre-empted the defense before the engagement even broke. "She's filming 'The 'Burbs'; I hardly think this ring is a prop." The ring needed a prop disclaimer before the engagement was a rumor. People ran the same three photos with the same word, "reportedly," like the diamond was a weather event.
An engagement is now a teaser trailer for a wedding you can't skip the ads on. The diamond is the hook, the emoji is the sting, and the actual asking is cut from the final cut because nobody in the room could agree on the script. Six kids, three ex-wives, a farm in Gloucestershire, and a Bond girl on the phone line.
YOUR TURN: The source says the ring is "hardly" a prop. If the prop version is the only honest part of the soft launch, do you think the real ring survives the wedding or gets donated to The 'Burbs' archive?
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