Dove Cameron & Ryan McCartan Are Engaged

It's Disney Channel engagement time! Liv & Maddie stars Dove Cameron and Ryan McCartan are engaged, McCartan announced in an Instagram post on Thursday (April 14). Sharing a sweet photo of him and Cameron cozying up to each other on the red carpet, McCartan captioned the pic, "Dedicating my 1,000th post to my fiancée. I can't believe I get to call you that. Thanks for saying yes." Of course, Liv & Maddie fans are beside themselves with excitement — after all, this is a ship they've been dedicated to for a very long time. Not only are their Disney Channel characters (Maddie and Diggie) romantically involved, but Cameron and McCartan have been heart-eye emojis IRL for quite some time (psst: they're also in a band, The Girl and the Dreamcatcher, together). To celebrate the happy couple's engagement, let's take it back to the very beginning: When did Dove Cameron and Ryan McCartan start dating?

According to E! News, they made their relationship public in August 2013. Both McCartan, 22, and Cameron, 20, have gushed over the specifics of their first date, which happened rather spontaneously after the two were filming Liv & Maddie late at night.

"We were shooting that night and I had recently gotten out of a pretty bad breakup and for whatever reason I was feeling pretty confident," McCartan told J-14 in 2015. "We were shooting and then we were done and everyone went home. For whatever reason, I guess fate was just on my side, but Dove and I were the last people there. I walked out of my dressing room and Dove walked out of hers and I was just like, 'Hey, do you want to go out on a date?' and she was like, 'Oh my God, sure.'"

What happened next was something straight out of a teen romance movie. After dinner and cider, the co-stars headed for the hills. Literally.

"I took her up to this place up in the Hollywood Hills that has basically a panoramic 360 view of all of Hollywood and all of the valley," McCartan recalled. "So we saw all the lights, the Hollywood sign, the Griffith Park Observatory, and it was so romantic. We were up there until three in the morning just like talking and looking at the lights. Then I took her home and it was the most perfect, most romantic first date ever."

As for their first kiss, it was equally as romantic (as you might imagine). Cameron was downright giddy while gushing about it to FanLaLa:

"He took me to this park underneath a tree at sunset. He brought this guitar and he was like, 'Do you wanna come write songs with me in the park?' I was like, 'OK!...You're what movies are about!'" she said, happily. You can literally see the stars in her eyes.

"I leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, and he turned his head really quickly and kissed me, because he knew that I was too shy to just kiss him. So, he like tricked me into it...I don't remember this—because in my mind it was magic and sparkles—but I apparently turned away and squealed and turned bright red."

"He said that was the moment that he knew that he was going to have feelings for me for a long time," she said. "He was like, 'I totally fell for you when you freaked out when I kissed you.' He tells that story a lot better than I do because I make myself sound like a gremlin and he makes it sound really cute."

Interestingly enough, Cameron revealed that there was that "in-between" period when they were dating before they were actually, well, officially "dating." It was during this time that they kissed for the first time, the actor revealed.

"This was back before we were like really, really dating," she said. "We were just sort of seeing what happened."

I get it: Everyone has that awkward stage of kind of seeing how things go before it turns into a full-fledged relationship. It's getting to know each other before making that commitment! And speaking of commitments, three years later after that first date, it looks like the two are making a big one. Good to know they couldn't be any happier.

Congratulations to the happy couple!