Hoda Kotb gets engaged with her financier beau

The beautiful and bold American broadcast journalist, television personality, and author Hoda Kotb and her long-time Boyfriend American financier beau Joel Schiffman.

Further the handsome hunk and her fiance walk down the aisle, she confirmed on the morning show, Monday. According to her, she said, Schiffman proposed while they were having “a little dinner on the beach,” telling her, “Be my wife.”

She continued, “He said some beautiful things.”

 “My heart has literally been pounding,” she told her excited co-hosts, adding, “I was totally shocked. He had a good poker face.”

During the interview with the PEOPLE, she said,

“I was afraid to even say it out loud because then it felt so real, I said, ‘Think about it for a day or a week or whatever.’ And he said, ‘I don’t need a day. Let’s get this journey going.’ At that point, I blubbered like a baby. It was like the dam burst.”

She continued,

“[He] has been so great,” Kotb gushed about Schiffman, who has an adult daughter, Kyle, from his previous marriage. “He’s such a great dad and a great influence.”