Valerie Bertinelli announced her engagement to AARP Magazine, a magazine for the 50+ age group. She has been with her fiance Tom Vitale since 2004.  The following excerpt is directly from the magazine article courtesy of PRNewswire.com:

On Turning 50 and Aging with Grace

“Women of this age are not dead. We’re part of baby boomers. We’re big, man!”

“You know what’s so great about being this age? We’re smarter.  And we’re not too old to grow.”

“I’ve never been a big age person.  I’ve got the lines.  I’m aging.  But so what? Now is the best of time of my life…I hope it just gets better, because this is really fun.”

“I’m proud to be an AARP member!”

“When I was [my son] Wolfie’s age and my mom would try to tell me something I was like, ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. God she knew what she was talking about.’”

On Finding Love

“I’ve never had a male friend like I have with Tom…Mature love doesn’t mean you have to be mature all the time—we definitely have our immature moments.  But when disagreements come up, we’re able to talk in a way that’s not attacking, and we’ll still love one another.”

“If my life wasn’t starting to turn around, I couldn’t have welcomed [fiancée Tom Vitale] into it.”

Fiance Tom Vitale on Valerie

“We just understood each other completely…My family is her family. It wasn’t love at first sight; it was family at first sight.”

“If the timing wasn’t right, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“We’re both still a little afraid of commitment but then we were over there [Italy), and it was like our souls were calibrated."

On Getting Healthy, Physically and Mentally

.....more after the break

"After Ed [ex-husband Eddie Van Halen] and I separated, I thought ‘I’ll finish raising my son, and I’ll go away, have about 40 cats, and just get nice and fat.’ I thought I would be alone for the rest of my life, because I didn’t want the responsibility. Relationships are too hard.”

“Valerie is a very strong woman,” says celebrity chef Rachael Ray, a close friend.  ”She pulled herself up from a tough place and came back swinging.”

Tom proposed to Valerie during a trip to Italy in Florence:

“We’d talked about getting married, but I was still shocked. It was sweet when he asked me, because he was so scared. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ “

I love the fact that Tom loved her when she had extra weight on her.  He loved her for who she was and that’s the best kind of love, baby:

“I’ve never felt more beautiful at any weight than when Tom looks at me,” she says. “He loved me no matter what. In his way, he’s teaching me to love myself just as I am.”

Congratulations to Valerie and Tom. They plan to wed this Fall with Tom making all the arrangements.