My husband only proposed after we were engaged! Basically my husband wanted to be sure of a few things that he didn’t want to ask me himself so the wife of someone very close to him (I call her my second mother in law) called me in and we had a chat. Then she phoned him to come round, we discussed the result of our chat and then she said “so I think she should go home,she’ll tell her parents, you will tell yours, and then you will follow!” (We are from different cities).
That evening he proposed properly right before the l’chaim.