It was supposed to be an intimate, picture-perfect proposal. Instead, actress Jane Seymour and her beau, physician-musician John Zambetti, found themselves laughing hysterically in their Malibu home as a vintage "toi et moi" diamond engagement ring bounced under the bed resulting in Zambetti getting his knee wedged under the bed frame as he tried to retrieve it.
"It was an interesting story," Seymour recently joked while recounting the Valentine's Day proposal in an interview with ExtraTV.
The slapstick mishap may not have gone according to plan, but the ring itself couldn't have been more perfect.
Zambetti chose a vintage "toi et moi" engagement ring — French for "you and me" — featuring two diamonds nestled side by side. The design immediately resonated with him because it symbolized the couple's journey to finding one another later in life.
"I saw this one ring that really spoke to me," Zambetti told People magazine. "Because it had two stones in it. I like the fact that it had two stones, and they had a little pavé path leading up to each stone."
To him, the symbolism was unmistakable.
"I thought, like, it's the two of us together, and there's our past lives each leading up to us being together," he explained.
Seymour was equally enchanted by the ring and its history. She learned that the toi et moi style traces its roots to late 18th-century France and was immortalized in 1796 when a young Napoleon Bonaparte proposed to Joséphine de Beauharnais with a bypass-style ring featuring two pear-shaped gems — a diamond and a sapphire — positioned in opposite directions.
The two stones represented two souls becoming one, and the romantic design quickly gained favor among European aristocrats before flourishing during the Victorian era and again during the Art Deco period.
Today's toi et moi rings come in countless variations. Some pair two identical diamonds, while others combine a diamond with a colored gemstone such as sapphire, emerald or ruby. Popular shape combinations include pear and oval, emerald and round, or two matching stones arranged symmetrically. Settings range from the classic bypass style to sleek open-shank designs that make the gems appear to float.
Seymour's vintage ring remains faithful to the style's original spirit. Its two center stones are joined visually by delicate pavé-set diamonds, creating a poetic representation of two lives converging.
As for the proposal itself, things unraveled almost immediately.
Zambetti had hidden the ring in a safe and planned to present it on the morning of Seymour's 75th birthday, the day after Valentine's Day. But as he knelt beside the bed, the ring slipped from the box and bounced underneath.
"Then I had to climb under the bed, and then I couldn't get out," he told People.
"The funniest part was that he couldn't get up afterwards," Seymour added. "His knee was now stuck from being under the bed and I'm not strong enough to pull him up because he weighs almost twice what I do. We looked at one another and started laughing hysterically."
The couple has been together for nearly three years. Seymour, who continues to act and recently appeared in films and television projects while maintaining an active producing career, describes Zambetti as "a magical human being."
Zambetti spent decades as an emergency room physician while simultaneously building a successful second career in music as a singer-songwriter, producer and co-founder of the surf-rock band The Malibooz.
Credits: Screen captures via YouTube / extratv.