Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie engaged

After years of unwedded bliss, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have suddenly announced theyre engaged to be married.

Yes, its confirmed, Cynthia Pett-Dante, Pitts manager, told USA Today in a statement. It is a promise for the future, and their kids are very happy. Theres no date set at this time. And yes, she confirms that Pitt designed the ring.

Earlier, Beverly Hills jeweler Robert Procop confirmed to USA Today that he helped Pitt, 48, design a custom diamond engagement ring for Jolie, 36, with whom the actor has six children.

Hollywoods platinum pair was spotted Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where Jolie donned a massive diamond on her left ring finger.

Brad had a specific vision for this ring, which he realized over a yearlong collaboration with Robert. He wanted every aspect of it to be perfect, so Robert was able to locate a diamond of the finest quality and cut it to an exact custom size and shape to suit Angelinas hand, Procop said in a statement. Brad was always heavily involved, overseeing every aspect of the creative design evolution. The side diamonds are specially cut to encircle her finger. Each diamond is of the highest gem quality.

Procop was not just some random choice for Pitt: The jeweler has worked with Jolie as well, designing baubles, the Style of Jolie collection, to benefit the Education Partnership for Children in Conflict.

With the engagement, the Jolie-Pitt brood is getting its happily-ever-after wish: Mom and Dad are making their union legal, just like Shrek and Fiona.

Back in December, Jolie told Nightline that the kids had been asking why she and their dad werent official because, after all, people get married in the movies.

Jolies rationale for their relationship then? You dont have to be married to be committed to a partner or your family. Weve explained to them that our commitment, when we decided to start a family, was the greatest commitment you could possibly have, she said. Once you have s! ix child ren, youre committed.

The kids, it seems, have long played a role in the couples will-they-or-wont-they game with the press. Earlier this year, Pitt told CBS News that they were getting a lot of pressure from the kids.

It means something to them, he said. We will (get married) someday, we will. Its a great idea. Get mommy a ring. OK, I will, I will.

But Jolie later seemed to shoot down a potential proposal, telling People at the Screen Actors Guild Awards: I think anything said tends to be blown out of proportion.

No one knows what kind of party the Jolie-Pitts will throw, but in the Nightline interview the matriarch joked whether her kids fascination with a parental wedding was just because they wanted to have a big cake.

Last May, however, Pitt struck a more serious note when he told USA Weekend: The kids ask about marriage. Its meaning more and more to them. So its something weve got to look at. (It was an about-face from his 2006 comment in Esquire that he and Jolie would consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.)

In 2010, Jolie also sounded as though she and Pitt were taking their childrens altar inquiries to heart, telling ABC News that they would get hitched if the kids asked them to: I think it would be hard to say no to the kids.

So she said yes to their dad.

In recent years, both Jolie and Pitt have had sterling film careers.

Jolie received positive reviews for her first outing as a film director, In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), a Romeo-and-Juliet story set in war-torn Bosnia, and is reported to be working on a script about another war-ravaged country, Afghanistan. She is a big hit with kids voicing the Tigress in the Kung Fu Panda movies, and she will play Evelyn Salt again in the sequel to her 2010 hit thriller, Salt. Plus, announced this week: Jolie will play Maleficent, the villain from Sleeping Beauty, in a film due out in 2014.

Pitt was nominated for Oscars (his four! th) for last years Moneyball, a complicated story about baseball and money that managed to be a feel-good film anyway thanks to Pitts performance as the lead actor and a co-producer. He, too, thrills the kiddies as a voice actor in the Happy Feet sequel, and is in post-production in four movies, including a 2013 film from mysteriously reclusive director Terrence Malick, called Voyage of Time and said to be about the birth and death of the universe. Another Pitt movie due in 2013 is Twelve Years a Slave, about a man kidnapped in New York in the 19th century and sold into slavery in the Deep South.

Jolie and Pitt are famous for their clan of six kids, some adopted some born to them, and hailing from lands in Africa, Asia and Europe. Jolie has said they are being brought up to take pride in their own and each others cultures, even placing little flags of their native countries above their beds.

Maddox Chivan: Adopted by Jolie and then-husband actor Billy Bob Thornton in 2002 from an orphanage in Cambodia. He will be 11 in August. Jolie applied to adopt a Cambodian child after visiting the country while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). It wasnt finalized until the following year when she was in Namibia, Africa, filming Beyond Borders (2003).

Zahara Marley: In 2005, Jolie adopted Zahara, at age six months, from an orphanage in Ethiopia. She was 7 in January. Wrongly assumed to be an AIDS orphan, Zahara later tested negative for the virus. At the time, Jolie and Pitt said they made the decision to adopt the baby together. Jolie later got her childrens surnames legally changed to Jolie-Pitt.

Shiloh Nouvel: The couple went to Namibia to avoid the press and give birth to their first child together in May 2006. For the first time, the couple sought to gain more control over the frenzied competition from celebrity media for pictures. They sold the first pictures of the baby girl directly to People and Hello for more than $7 million total, which they then donated to charities for African child! ren. Shi loh, like all the kids, has been a target of the paparazzi especially because she likes to dress as a boy and her parents are relaxed about it.

Pax Thien: The couple adopted their second son, then 3, from an orphanage in Vietnam in March 2007. He will be 9 in November. Jolie adopted him as a single parent because the Vietnamese do not allow unmarried couples to adopt. Again, they sold pictures directly to People and Hello for millions. And Pitts adoption of Pax was finalized in the U.S. in 2008. Last year, during a family visit to Vietnam, Pax was able to meet his biological grandmother at the resort where they stayed.

Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline: The twins were born in July 2008 in a seaside hospital in Nice, France, near the luxury villa where the family had been living. They will be 4 in July. The first pictures were sold to People and Hello for a reported $14 million, making them probably the highest-priced celeb baby photos ever. The couple gave the proceeds to their charity, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

USA Today