Miley Cyrus has broken her silence after it was revealed that the Grammy-winning superstar is engaged to her longtime boyfriend Maxx Morando.
Hours after the Daily Mail confirmed the news, the 33-year-old spoke to PEOPLE about the milestone in her four-year relationship with Morando, 27.
She and the hunky musician first sparked up a romance in late 2021 following Cyrus’s heartbreaking divorce from Liam Hemsworth, 35, who also recently got engaged.
While Miley didn’t share any details about how Morando proposed, she did reveal why she’s been been left ‘astounded’ by the engagement.
‘The detail that I can share is that for us, our privacy and us kind of keeping it small has been something that I’ve been astounded that I’ve actually been able to have and being able to kind of have more choice,’ she revealed.
The Hannah Montana alum added: ‘I think it’s also being older, being more protective of what I’m open to sharing.’
She first sparked engagement rumors on Monday night when she flashed a ring on her wedding finger while on the red carpet at the Avatar: Fire And Ash premiere in Los Angeles.
While speaking to PEOPLE, she connected the film’s themes to the events in her own life as it’s ‘about love, family resilience and kind of reconnection and that stronger together idea.
‘And so I thought it was kind of perfectly thematic and aligned with where I am in my life now.’
Cyrus notably brought Morando as her plus one to the premiere of the upcoming James Cameron-directed blockbuster, for which she penned the ballad Dream As One.
The ring she was wearing was later revealed to be an engagement ring, which was custom-made for Cyrus by jewelry designer Jacquie Aiche.
The rock, which reportedly cost Morando $150,000, is a cushion-cut stone set in a 14-karat yellow gold band.
Cyrus first appeared wearing the ring in photos shared to Instagram in honor of her recent 33rd birthday on November 23. However, the engagement was entirely unknown to the public at the time.
It was Morando’s father who would go to confirm the engagement by sharing photos of Cyrus and Morando from the birthday celebration captioned ‘congratulations!’- with Cyrus showing off the ring.
Sources tell the Daily Mail that Cyrus has finally matured enough to be able to ‘choose the right guy’.
One insider said: ‘Friends are happy for Miley, because Maxx is a really good guy and not the usual guy she goes after.’
A second source said Morando had ingratiated himself well with Cyrus famed family, especially her mother Tish.
They said: ‘Tish knows him pretty well and likes him a lot. Says he is exactly what Miley needs. They complement each other well. She’s definitely very happy about this; it’s a good thing.’
As for Miley’s dad Billy Ray, the source shared: ‘Billy met him a lot more recently and from what I can see, likes him pretty well. The family is very happy with this. No drama.’
Cyrus and Morando’s romance began when they went on a blind date in late 2021, however they did not confirm their relationship until the following year.
During an interview with British Vogue in 2023, the actress said of their first date: ‘Well, it was blind for me and not really for him. I thought, ‘The worst that can happen is I leave.”
The couple mainly keep their relationship out of the public eye, but have been spotted at a few events this year.
Back in March, Miley and Maxx were seen walking the red carpet together at the 97th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood. Later that evening, the pair also stopped by Vanity Fair Oscars Party.
One month prior, the two stars also attended the SNL50: The Anniversary Special in NYC as well as the Homecoming Concert alongside Miley’s mother Tish Cyrus.
Cyrus has previously talked about her and Maxx’s age gap during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar late last year.
‘He looks at life really differently than I do,’ she said, before adding, ‘He grew up with a laptop. I had a desktop computer that I shared with my brothers and sisters.’
Despite him being younger, the singer explained, ‘He’s very similar to me. We just don’t take life too seriously.’
Cyrus’ relationship with Morando came nearly two years after she finalized her divorce from Hemsworth in January 2020
The former couple, who originally met on set of the film The Last Song, got married in December 2019 after dating on/off since 2009.
But, just eight months later, Cyrus and Hemsworth shockingly separated in August 2019.
By the time their divorce was finalized, they had only been married 13 months.
During a 2020 appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Cyrus admitted that her split from Hemsworth ‘f*****g sucked.’
‘What really sucked about it wasn’t the fact that me and someone that I loved realized that we don’t love each other the way that we used to anymore,’ the Midnight Sky singer told Rogan.
‘That’s okay, I can accept that. I can’t accept the villainizing, and just all those stories.’
Cyrus was alluding to rumors that infidelity had played a role in their divorce. Soon after separating from Hemsworth, Cyrus famously went on to briefly date Kaitlynn Carter before starting a 10-month romance with singer Cody Simpson, who she split from in August 2020.
‘It’s amazing to me the public thinks that there’s no gap of time that they didn’t see that could possibly be what led to this,’ she said of the cheating rumors.
‘It’s not, ‘One day you were happy on the carpet and the next day you were making out with your friend in Italy, what the f**k?’ There’s a lot of time in between that you didn’t see.’
Cyrus has claimed that there was ‘too much conflict’ in her marriage to Hemsworth.
‘When I come home, I want to be anchored by someone. I don’t get off on drama or fighting,’ she told Howard Stern in December 2020.
Cyrus’s Grammy Award-winning 2023 hit Flowers is believed to be about the breakdown of her and Hemsworth’s relationship.
While promoting the song, Cyrus finally revealed the moment she knew their marriage was over.
She told fans on TikTok in September 2023 that she came to the decision to leave Hemsworth came to the decision to leave her husband during her headlining gig at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival in England.
‘Glastonbury was in June, which was when the decision happened that me and Liam’s commitment to being married just really came from, of course, a place of love first — because we’d been together for 10 years — but also from a place of trauma,’ Cyrus began.
Just before their 2018 wedding, the couple lost their Malibu home to the devastating Woolsey Fire, which claimed the lives of three people and destroyed 1,643 structures in November 2018.
Cyrus explained that her and her ex were ‘just trying to rebuild as quickly as we could’ but it ultimately did more harm than good.
When she took the stage at Glastonbury the following year, she came to the realization that ‘it was no longer going to work in [her] life to be in that relationship.’
