Awhile ago I wrote about Kimberly Perry and Toronto Blue Jays starting catcher J.P. Arencibia keeping their relationship under wraps (https://topcountry.ca/kp-jp/) but it’s all out in the open now as the lovebirds have announced they are engaged! Kimberly shared the news first with The Tennessean.
Kimberly said “Yes” on Monday night after J.P (her boyfriend of a year-and-a-half) proposed at Perry’s parents house in Tennessee. She knew that J.P. was coming to visit, but she thought she was picking him up at the airport.
The Perry family moved to Greeneville, TN onto a 15-acre lot by a large oak tree when she was a teenager. Kimberly said that from the first time she saw the tree, she hoped that “If I get proposed to in this life, I hope it happens underneath this tree.” Perry thought her family was meeting to go to dinner, but when they called her to come outside, Arencibia was standing under the oak tree.
“I saw that and I thought, ‘This is really happening,’ ” she said.
Her mother sent her back in the house to put on her favorite pink dress — one that she had previously said if she were to get engaged, that was what she wanted to wear. When Perry got to the room she found her dress, a letter from her family and a bracelet that her grandfather had given her grandmother “way back in the day” when they started dating.
“I got to read the letter and get dressed and put on my grandfather’s bracelet. I came back out on the front porch and he was standing there and he got down on one knee. It was perfect.” She’s also happy to say that her entire family approves of Arencibia, including her brothers and bandmates Neil and Reid Perry, which is something she said is a first.
The couple first met in February 2012 at a show and Arencibia had previously seen Perry in the band’s ‘If I Die Young’ video and told Perry he “had this moment where he felt like that was going to be a part of his future.”
After watching the band’s shows from the audience, J.P. who attended The University of Tennessee and lives in Nashville in the off-season, used connections to get backstage, where he met Perry at the meet and greet. He got her phone number and they started dating a few months later.
Perry said several things made her know that he was the one, including his understanding of the fast-paced nature of her career, the confidence she felt in their relationship when they were apart, and not feeling spiritually and emotionally separated even when they can’t see or be with each other. “I’ve never felt that with anyone before,” she said. “He’s just a really gentle soul. He balances me for sure.”
Perry wasn’t exactly sure how big her diamond was in her engagement ring. The couple had it designed by a friend in Chicago. The singer said it’s emerald cut, “which is my absolute favorite.”
The two will wed next Summer. Congrats!
