Sara Bareilles Says Fiancé Joe Tippett Forgot the Ring When He Proposed: 'It Was a Spontaneous Moment'

Sara Bareilles was happy to say yes when longtime love Joe Tippett popped the question, even if the ring was nowhere in sight.

The Grammy winning singer-songwriter and Girls5Eva star, 44, opened up about her engagement during a visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers on Tuesday, teasing that Tippett, 42, didn't have her engagement ring with him when he asked her to be his wife.

"Yeah ... It was a spontaneous moment and so, in spontaneous times, sometimes you forget elements and he did forget the ring," she laughed. "But it was just downstairs in the hotel room! So he asked me and I said yes and then he said, 'I'll be right back!' "

The pair met while working together on the musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly's 2007 film Waitress, for which Bareilles wrote the score, during its out-of-town tryout at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts in August 2015.

Tippett — an actor celebrated for his work on Mare of Easttown and The Morning Show — played Earl, the moody husband of the story's protagonist Jenna, before the show's official move to Broadway. Bareilles later joined the show as Jenna, starring across from her now husband-to-be.

"We've been together for eight years," Bareilles continued to host Meyers, 50, responding to the "when you know, you know" saying by agreeing "in a way, you know."

Back in June, Tippett opened up to PEOPLE about his proposal at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Waitress, the Musical - Live on Broadway!, which is available for streaming.

The two were in Mexico City at the time, and had long been talking about getting engaged.

"We had been looking for the perfect ring and couldn't find it," Tippett recalled. "And I was like, 'I just want to do it!' So we found this cheap little ring in a market that we both love, and we were like, 'That's the thing for now!' "

Later, Tippett was inspired to ask the question. "We were up on a roof at sunset, the sky was on fire and we were listening to music and slow dancing, and it was like, 'OK, now!' " he said. "I asked and she said yes and I was like, 'Well f---, I forgot the ring, I have to go down and get it!' So then I came back up, got down on one knee, we did the deal and it was great."

Since then, Tippett has upgraded the ring, swapping it for a gold piece he found "at an antique store upstate."

The happy pair went public with their romance in 2017 as they attended a handful of events together, including PEOPLE and EW's Upfronts Party. News of their engagement was made public on New Years Day 2023 when she posted, "Yes to marrying this man. It's an easy, earned, relaxed YES."

As far as when the wedding will be, that's still up in the air. "Oh man, we were aiming for this year," Bareilles told PEOPLE earlier this month at the season 3 premiere of Girls5Eva. "But with his shooting schedule, I think it might be too hard to pull it together this year, so it might get pushed to next year."

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To help with the preparations, the soon-to-be newlyweds have also enlisted a wedding planner to alleviate stress.

"I want to just be rooted in the joy and the celebration of finding someone I love this much and wanting to shout it from the mountaintops," Bareilles said, noting that she went to look at venues and is already worried "that I'm going to lose sight of what we're doing."

"I don't want it to become about producing a big party," she said.