Engaged at 52, Yvette Nicole Brown encourages others ‘to wait for the right one’
After meeting in their 20s, “Community” star Yvette Nicole Brown and fiancé Anthony R. Davis explain why their love story was worth the wait.
At 52 years old, “Community” star Yvette Nicole Brown is realizing a dream she’d long since abandoned: building a life with her person.
“I’m of a certain age, and had stopped dreaming of weddings — and you know, I’m not one of those girls who has a vision board of, ‘This is my dress.’ I did that in my 20s; it didn’t happen. I was done,” Brown explains during an upcoming episode of the QVC+/HSN+ video podcast “Getting Grilled with Curtis Stone,” per a sneak peek to People magazine. “It’s been 30 years since I dreamed about a wedding or where I was gonna hold it or whatever, so I’m clueless.”
Nevertheless, planning is definitely in the works as Brown prepares to wed fiancé Anthony R. Davis, who appears alongside her in the episode. After meeting as twenty-somethings, the two got reacquainted in 2021.
“We’ve known each other since we were in our 20s. We were in an acting class together at church years ago,” Brown shared as she announced her engagement while co-hosting “The View” in December 2023. “He was married at the time, and we were platonic friends, and then we lost touch for a few years.”
After Davis divorced, he reached out to Brown following the death of her mother. Amid a rekindled friendship, a romance “happened organically,” he tells Stone. “[It] manifested itself over just friendship.”
“In life, sometimes things happen and you think, OK, I’m done with dating. I’m not gonna deal with this anymore,’” Davis adds. “And then in comes somebody who’s pumping your heart, helping you breathe and you don’t even realize it.”
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“To be my age, to be single as long as I was single and to have waited — you know, I didn’t just grab a guy, I waited until I found the guy my heart loves — that’s a testimony and that’s also aspirational and inspirational to women that are in my position,” said Brown.
As the two find their own balance between sharing their story and enjoying the intimacy of romance, they claim to remain undecided about those wedding details. As Davis tells Brown during their “Getting Grilled” episode, it could be “at the Justice of the Peace” or a “vineyard”; his only requirement is “it has to be you.”
According to Brown, the love she’s found with Davis has made it more than worth the wait — and she hopes others will be encouraged to exercise patience with their own lives and loves.
“I would love for a 40-something or a 50-something woman to see this story and go, ‘OK, it’s right for me to wait for the right one, or to not just marry whoever asks me first if I don’t feel it.’” she says. “It is still possible.”
