Josh Duhamel Reveals Engagement, and Fergie Quickly Reacts

Actor Josh Duhamel and his girlfriend, Audria Mari, are engaged. Duhamel broke the news on Saturday and quickly received the support of his ex-wife, singer Fergie. The Transformers actor, 49, and Mari have been dating since 2019.

“It’s on!! She found a message in a bottle that washed ashore and said YES!!” Duhamel wrote, alongside a photo of the couple taken at a beach. The message reads, “Audra Diane Mari, will you marry me?” The engagement fell on Mari’s 28th birthday, PEOPLE reports.

Mari shared the same photo on her Instagram page. “My heart is so happy… I love you,” she wrote. Fergie was among the many celebrities who congratulated the couple. “Congrats!!!” Fergie simply wrote, adding several green heart emojis.

Duhamel and Mari, a former Miss World America, started dating in early 2019. They were pictured together at a holiday party in December 2019, weeks after his divorce from Fergie was finalized. “They’ve known each other for quite some time and began dating seven or eight months ago,” a source told PEOPLE in December 2019. “He’s really happy with her.”

Fergie and Duhamel married in 2009 and announced their separation in September 2017. However, Fergie did not file for divorce until May 2019, and it was finalized in November 2019. The former couple is parents to son Axl Jack Duhamel, 8. “We are and will always be united in our support of each other and our family,” Fergie and Duhamel said in a 2017 statement.

In a 2018 episode of Armchair Expert, Duhamel told Dax Shepard he was interested in having more children. “I’m not 30 years old anymore. I’m 45. I want to have more kids in the next few years,” Duhamel said. “So it’s more about finding someone young enough to have kids. It’s not as if I’m out there trying to just f— anything. That’s not who I am. I’m trying to find a girl that I can be with and have a family with.”

Duhamel is best known for playing William Lennox in the Transformers movies. His next movie is the Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy Shotgun Wedding, which opens on June 29. He is also slated to star in The Thing About Pam, an NBC limited series starring Renee Zellweger. In 2021, Duhamel also starred in Netflix’s short-lived superhero drama Jupiter’s Legacy.

Mari won the Miss World America title in 2016 and finished 11th in the Miss World competition that year. She was also Miss North Dakota USA in 2014 and was the runner-up in the Miss USA competition that year. Duhamel is also a North Dakota native.