Finneas Shares the Secret Plan Behind His Proposal to Fiancée Claudia Sulewski

NEED TO KNOW

• Finneas O’Connell and Claudia Sulewski got engaged on Sept. 22, 2025

• The groom-to-be revealed all the details from his mountainside proposal in a new interview

• The couple has been in a relationship for more than seven years

Nearly eight months after popping the question, Finneas O’Connell is breaking down all the details from the day he proposed to his fiancée, Claudia Sulewski.

The musician, 28, proposed to Sulewski, 30, on bended knee on Sept. 22, 2025, seven years after the couple met on a dating app. O’Connell opened up about his engagement during his appearance on NBC’s Today with Jenna & Sheinelle on Wednesday, June 10.

The Beef season 2 composer explained that he used the couple’s seventh anniversary as a “Trojan horse.” He hoped that because they were already celebrating, Sulewski wouldn’t suspect that he was actually using their romantic date as an opportunity to propose.

“I think she thought we were going to go do a little staycation at a beach,” O’Connell said. “I was relying on her to be distracted by getting ready in the morning, and maybe sending a work email or something. And I drove her to the airport. She was like, ‘Why are we at the airport?’ We got on a helicopter, and I was like, ‘We’re taking a helicopter to a private campsite in the mountains,’ and I brought a private chef with us. And so he cooked food for us, and then he got back on the helicopter and left.”

He continued, “We were marooned on the mountainside, and then we just had this really beautiful day out in nature. And then, I did ask [her to marry me].”

O’Connell — who is the brother of Billie Eilish and has won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and 11 Grammys — admitted that he was a little nervous, especially when it came to keeping the engagement ring hidden.

“The ring was in a sock wrapped around another sock in my suitcase. And then there was one point where it was about to happen, and I was, like, ‘Hang on. One second.’ It was just lies all day,” O’Connell recalled. “And I ran around, and I heard the ring, like, rattling in the box in my pocket. And so I went and hid behind a bush and untied the thing and opened it and tucked it back in its little slot, and then was, like, walking in a sort of ballet pose.”

O’Connell and Sulewski announced their engagement in a joint Instagram post two days after the proposal. Sulewski wrote in the caption, “forever and ever 9.22.”

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In January, Sulewski shared an update on the couple’s wedding planning progress. She revealed that they were still in the early stages of planning, but that O’Connell is helping out more than she expected him to.

“Finneas has had more input than I think he thought he would have, which is exciting for me because I don’t want to feel like I’m planning all this by myself,” the Cyklar founder said in a YouTube video. “I’ve been really surprised by how many opinions my fiancé has had, and I love it because I want him to feel ownership of this special day for us.”

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