WWE Superstar Sonya Deville has announced her engagement.
Deville and her partner Toni Cassano told PEOPLE that Deville proposed on February 15 at a wine cellar in Towaco, New Jersey. Cassano, a fitness model, enthusiastically agreed. Photos are included below.
Deville and Cassano first met when Deville invited Cassano to a WWE event in April 2022.
Cassano surprised Deville with her own engagement ring moments after she gave her fianceé a custom ring from Happy Jewelers in front of friends and family.
Deville said, “I proposed, then Toni’s like, ‘Grab my purse.’ And she pulls out a freaking ring box, and she’s like, ‘I’ve been carrying this around in my purse for four months. So whenever you proposed, I could give you a ring immediately back.’ ”
“It truly was the biggest blur ever,” Cassano said of the night. “All I remember is both of us shaking so bad.”
Deville added, “I could go on for days about the way I feel about this woman, I never knew love could feel so happy and safe all at the same time. I found my best friend, my soul mate and my life partner all in one incredible human. She is the epitome of my ride or die. To be able to show her and her two daughters how much they all mean to me was what this proposal was all about. They are my world and now we are one family forever together.”
Cassano has two daughters, ages seven and eleven, who were included in the proposal.
“I wanted to make it something that they were super involved in,” Deville said. “But I also wanted them to be surprised because I wanted them to have a memorable moment too.”
Cassano agreed to meet Deville at a WWE event in April of last year.
“This is going to sound really cheesy, but I knew [she was the one] the second I saw her,” Deville said. “I got her a front-row ticket to my show, and I was going to take her out to dinner after. But I didn’t have time to meet her before the show, so the first time I ever saw Toni was when I was coming out doing my entrance ready to wrestle and I looked into the crowd.”
When the WWE event ended too late for the couple to make dinner reservations that night, they ended up at a random dive bar and talked until 5 a.m.
“I was instantly like, ‘This girl is the love of my life,’ ” said Deville. “She just had the most grounded, cool energy and just was so beautiful, but you could tell she doesn’t know it. She’s just so cool and humble, and I was just like, ‘This is my girl.’ ”
Deville continued, “It’s so cool to me to be in this position right now, to be engaged as a gay female in the WWE, and to have proposed to my fiancée. Because I look back at seven years ago, eight years ago when I wasn’t even openly out yet, and I was hiding relationships, and I was still trying to figure out my comfortability with being gay and who I was. So, I think it’s crazy to see the evolution of my life and my journey and the fans that have been able to come along that journey with me. I think now it’s just so cool to be like, ‘I never thought I’d be here, but look guys, I’m here and you guys can do it too. And it’s okay to be who you are. It’s okay to love who you love, and it’s so special and so important to accept yourself.’ ”
Deville said that now that she’s engaged to her “dream person,” it’s “really important” to her to show her fans that they’re “loved and special,” and that “they can have all the same moments that anybody else can.”
