Red carpet reporters grilled Met Gala attendees as they headed up to the celebration inside the Metropolitan Museum on Monday night. But one guest received a question unlike any other.

 

Laurie Cumbo, the newly appointed commissioner of New York’s Department of Cultural Affairs, said “yes” to her partner’s surprise engagement proposal on the museum steps. Former assembly candidate Bobby Digi Olisa, Cumbo’s seven-year boyfriend, took a knee as supporters clapped. The whole thing was caught on video.

The commissioner, still in wonder, spoke with media shortly after the engagement.

“I didn’t know it was going to happen tonight,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “We’ve been talking about it. We’ve been through so much and this is such an honor and this is such a blessing.”

For Cumbo, the night was already imbued with extra significance. The last time she attended the Met Gala, she explained, was when she was working for the museum as an intern at age 15. 

“Now I’m coming back, with my now-husband, as the commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs,” Cumbo said. “It’s a full-circle moment.”

“You know, it’s always like trying to wait for the right time. So when is the right time considering everything that’s going on worldwide? So I was just like, ‘Today we’re going to make it happen,’” Digi Olisa told the Associated Press.

Laurie Cumbo, Commissioner of New York City Cultural Affairs, and her now-fiance Bobby Digi Olisa arrive for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on May 2, 2022. Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images..

Digi Olisa is not the first one to ask the question during the event. Rapper 2 Chainz proposed to his girlfriend Kesha Ward on the Met Gala steps in 2018, while Donald Trump proposed to Melania Trump at the event in 2004. The theme for the latter event was “Dangerous Liaisons.”

In March, New York City Mayor Eric Adams appointed Cumbo as the city’s culture czar, a move that sparked considerable controversy among community leaders. Cumbo, who recently completed a seven-year term on the New York City Council, came under fire in 2021 for opposing a bill that would enable non-citizens to vote. Cumbo founded the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts in Brooklyn in 1999, before entering politics.

Adams wore a tuxedo with the slogan “End Gun Violence,” made by Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Láolú Senbanjo, to the Met gala on Monday. The mayor previously donned Senbanjo-designed apparel to the 2019 Ralph Lauren fashion show at the Museum of Modern Art.