Hallmark Actress Reveals She’s Engaged at 38: ‘I Knew What I Wanted’

Heavy engagement ring

With a fresh new Emmy nomination and a new show in the works, actress Karen Pittman’s career isn’t the only thing on fire. Pittman, who helped launch Hallmark‘s Mahogany movie brand in 2022 with her award-winning film, “Unthinkably Good Things,” has revealed her love life is red-hot, too.

Pittman flashed a shimmering diamond ring on “The Today Show” on August 14, 2024, announcing that she is engaged to her filmmaker beau, Ade Richardson. Nominated for a Supporting Actress Emmy for her current role on Apple TV’s “The Morning Show,” Pittman, 38, shared her happy news with co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager, revealing that she met her fiancé on a dating app.

“Listen, an app is good, they’re still doing good out there,” Pittman insisted. “I was very intentional. I knew what I wanted and I didn’t compromise, and he showed up.”

Karen Pittman Laughs as She Reveals She Got Engaged ‘in Bed’

Eager to know all the details about her engagement, Kotb and Bush Hager asked Pittman how Richardson proposed.

“It was in bed, need I say more,” Pittman said coyly and then laughed, “He’s gonna die when he sees this!”

Though Pittman has two kids from past relationships, she has never been married. In 2023, she told InStyle, “I’m a single mother, actually. I have two children. There was a period where I felt very disappointed, quite frankly, in my experience as a woman — that I didn’t have a partner to go through this life with. And I realized that I wasn’t going to be one of those women who was like, ‘Oh, we have been together for 30, 40 years,’ and I really had to reconcile that.”

But the actress told Kotb and Hager that she realized she needed to love herself in order to attract the kind of love she truly wanted in her life.

“I think in a lot of ways I represent, like, a strong woman in my characters and also in my life, but I was my own best love before I met him, and I think that is really, really important,” she said. “And I do love my children, I love my work and I’m passionate about it, but for a long time I wasn’t passionate about loving me, which I figured out and he showed up.”

Pittman added that Richardson, who runs Satari Flims, is “adorable and sweet” and that he helps her stay grounded in the entertainment industry, which isn’t easy to do, she said.

“You know, in the industry it’s so, so fickle, it’s so ‘up here’ and he is grounded, sweet and kind, earthy,” she explained. “And (he) just shifts my energy into a place that allows me to feel just that — grounded.”

Karen Pittman’s Comments About Her Hallmark Movie Mirror Her Romance Now

HallmarkErica Ash, Karen Pittman, and Joyful Drake in “Unthinkably Good Things”

Pittman’s characterization of how she found true love after learning to love herself mirrors what she said two years ago, in August 2022, she loved most about Hallmark’s “Unthinkably Good Things,” which co-starred Erica Ash and Joyful Drake, and won the Gracie Award in 2023 for Best Made-for-Television Movie.

She told TV Insider at the time that the movie is “very much about falling in love with your life, not just falling in love with your romantic partner.”

She added, “I was intrigued by the idea of doing something that feels good — feel-good TV — which I think Hallmark is known for, and I felt like coming out of the pandemic, I wanted to be involved in a story that was about love and friendship and relationships.”

Sadly, Ash died of metastatic breast cancer on July 29. In tribute, Pittman shared multiple Instagram photos of Ash while they were filming the Hallmark movie in Tuscany and wrote, “Sending love to the incredible Queen, Erica Ash. @theericaash It was an honor to help build the @hallmarkmahogany brand with you and to get to know your wit and intelligence. Your beauty and spirit live on…🕊️🕊️”

Pittman told Kotb and Hager Bush that she’s not returning for the new season of the “Sex and the City” spinoff “And Just Like That” because she’s joined the cast of a new Netflix series based on Judy Blume’s coming-of-age novel, “Forever.” She did not specify when she and Richardson hope to get married.