'RHOC' 's Vicki Gunvalson Is Engaged to Boyfriend of 3 Years Steve Lodge: 'We're So Happy,' She Says

Vicki Gunvalson and her boyfriend of three years Steve Lodge are taking the next step: They’re engaged!

The Real Housewives of Orange County star announced the news Friday on Instagram with a photo of the couple smiling as Gunvalson shows off the five-and-half-carat ring, resting one hand on her fiancé’s chest.

“I said ‘YES.’ #engaged #happy #mylove,” she captioned the post.

“We’re so happy,” Gunvalson tells PEOPLE. “He’s an amazing guy and the proposal was perfect. I can’t wait.”

Gunvalson, 57, has been married twice: first to Michael J. Wolfsmith from 1982-1991, and to Donn Gunvalson from 1994-2014.

She started dating Lodge after her tumultuous relationship with Brooks Ayers. The two were together for several years before calling it quits in July 2015.

Ayers made headlines when he admitted he had forged medical records relating to his alleged cancer diagnosis in order to make it appear as though he had been a patient at the cancer hospital City of Hope. Though he maintained he was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2013, Ayers claimed he drafted the fake documents in order to quiet Gunvalson’s RHOC castmates, who had been questioning the validity of his illness at the time. Gunvalson has insisted that she was totally in the dark about Ayers’ lies.

Now, Gunvalson has found the one in Lodge, telling PEOPLE Now last summer that he’s “just an incredible, calming force to my crazy-a— life.”

“I love him so much,” she said. “We live together now. Our families are good and we’re good, we’re taking everything slow in regards to the engagement and marriage because we’d never want to be divorced again. We’ve both got some divorces under our belt and we don’t have to rush. We want to be on our time. I want to be his wife, he knows that, and he wants to be my husband. So we’ll see what happens!”

That said, she admitted she’d already “picked out about five” engagement rings on Pinterest in the hopes of finding something “really unique.”

As for what kind of wedding she envisions with Lodge?

“Small. Our circle is getting super small,” she said. “Maybe on a ranch or in the country, just something really easy. I don’t want the big ballgown.”

And she’s not opposed to getting married on TV.

“Maybe. We’ll see,” she said. “We might go to Vegas one day! Who knows? When it’s right, it’s going to be right. But right now I’m just happy with him and we have a great time together.”