Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are engaged

Finally, the whispering can stop: “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are engaged, an MSNBC spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday.

The public acknowledgement comes after years of speculation about the pair, who from behind the desk of their morning-news show projected a banter-filled relationship that was more what you’d expect from a married couple keeping things spicy than colleagues who happened to share a teleprompter.

Off-air, they seemed to revel even more in the flirty co-branding. Their shared office at 30 Rockefeller Center was adorned with a large mural of the couple walking on a sunset-lit beach. A 2012 Vanity Fair photo shoot featured Brzezinski perched on a desk, one leg kicked into the air, coyly looking over her shoulder at Scarborough.

They were seemingly inseparable, turning up together at events in Washington and New York. When Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida, performed with his band, Brzezinski was inevitably in the audience.

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And they did little to quash talk that the relationship was more than professional — Scarborough recently boasted to the Hollywood Reporter of their “crackling off-air chemistry.”

Not everyone who knew them was discreet: President Donald Trump, who critics accused the TV talkers of cozying up to during the GOP primary, in August tweeted a signature slam: “Some day, when things calm down, I’ll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika,” the then-candidate wrote. “Two clowns!”

Of course, Scarzinski’s road to betrothed bliss wasn’t simple. When the show began on MSNBC in 2007, they were married to other people. Brzezinski divorced journalist Jim Hoffer after 23 years of marriage last year, while Scarborough and his second wife, Susan Waren, split in 2013.

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Still, their engagement feels just a bit inevitable. The proposal itself was fittingly cinematic – according to The New York Post, the couple were celebrating Brzezinski’s 50th birthday in Antibes at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc’s Bar Bellini (a fave of F. Scott Fitzgerald).

On the “breathtaking moonlit outdoor terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea,” Scarborough dropped to a knee and offered a ring, per the tab.

While the couple is just now acknowledging their relationship publicly, it came up in at least one private conversation.  In an interview with Vanity Fair, Brzezinski says that when she and Scarborough met with Trump the week after inauguration (the mean tweet, it seems, was forgiven), the new POTUS offered to host their wedding at Mar-a-Lago or the White House.

Jared Kushner, who was in on the confab, volunteered to officiate, she said, to which Trump retorted, “Why would you marry them? They could have the President of the United States marry them.”

(Brzezinski’s thoughts on the offer? “No, no, no, no, no.”)

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