MSNBC 'Morning Joe' hosts Scarborough, Brzezinski engaged

"Morning Joe" co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are engaged, according to MSNBC.

The news confirms rumors of an off-screen romance that have been swirling since last year.

The engagement was first reported by the New York Post's Page Six on Thursday.

Regular panelist Harold Ford Jr. offered his congratulations at the top of Thursday's show. Brzezinski thanked him before fellow co-host Willie Geist joked that Ford was congratulating the pair on the show's ratings.

An MSNBC spokesperson told The Associated Press that the couple is engaged, but said the network wouldn't be commenting further.

The couple gave details about their engagement to Vanity Fair for a story published online just after their show ended Thursday.

Brzezinski told the magazine that Scarborough proposed during a recent trip to France for Brzezinski's 50th birthday, which was May 2. They were walking up a hill to a hotel bar in the coastal town of Antibes when Brzezinski said Scarborough got down on one knee, presented Brzezinski with an oval-shaped diamond ring and asked the question.

"Absolutely," Brzezinski replied.

Plans for the couple's wedding have yet to be finalized, but they're ruling out an offer from President Donald Trump to do the honors. The couple told Vanity Fair that Trump told them during a meeting shortly after his inauguration that they should consider getting married at the White House or his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida and he could perform the ceremony.

Brzezinski, the daughter of national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, told Vanity Fair that a White House wedding might be something to think about, "if it weren't Trump."

Scarborough and Brzezinski said they aren't sure how going public with the romance will affect the show's dynamic, but Scarborough told Vanity Fair they aren't concerned.

"We want to spend the rest of our lives together and that's more important than what management will think and critics will think or anybody else," he said.

This would be 54-year-old Scarborough's third marriage following his divorce from Susan Warren in 2013. An MSNBC spokesperson told the New York Post last year that the Brzezinski and WABC-TV reporter Jim Hoffer had divorced after 23 years of marriage.