Burnett, Downey touched by engagement
From Natalie Finn

LOS ANGELES — Get ready for Survivor: Aisle Edition. Emmy-winning producer Mark Burnett got engaged to former Touched by an Angel star Roma Downey over the holiday weekend, Celebrity Week reported Sunday.
The U.K.-bred couple spent their Thanksgiving vacation in the beachside Mexican town of Zihuatanejo (also the retreat of choice for prison pals Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, FYI), where Burnett got down on one knee to pop the question.
“I have found my angel,” the Survivor creator told People magazine. The British Burnett and Downey, who’s from Northern Ireland, had been neighbors in Malibu for years before making a love connection in January 2004. Both are 46 years old.
“I think we were both deliciously ignorant of each other, and so, when we met, we didn’t bring any preconceived notions of who the other person was,” Downey told People in June of that year. “The attraction was very real.” This will be Downey’s third trip down the aisle and Burnett’s second. Downey has a 10-year-old daughter, Reilly, with her second hubby, Hill Street Blues producer David Anspaugh. Burnett has two sons, James, 13, and Cameron, 9, with ex-wife Diane.
All three kids were on hand when Burnett proposed. “We are people with similar backgrounds,” the reality TV pioneer told People shortly after hooking up with Downey. “We are both from Great Britain and both living in Malibu and we both have kids. And we laugh all the time.
“We laugh all the time because we come from blue-collar families, so I tell her things she hasn’t heard in years, and then she will tell friends, who won’t even get that commonality, so we’ll laugh even more.” That should be a nice departure for Downey, who spent the better part of nine years making audiences smile through their tears playing the heaven-sent Monica on CBS’ Touched by an Angel. The show signed off in 2003, after which the Derry-born beauty decided to slow things down a bit.
Not so much for her husband-to-be, who Downey called “the busiest man in show business.” Next up for Burnett, who also created The Apprentice, The Restaurant, The Contender, Rock Star, and the race-vs.-race concept on Survivor this season (well, they can’t all be good ideas), is On the Lot, a collaboration with Steven Spielberg.
The powerhouse producers have joined forces on a competition series for Fox that will test aspiring filmmakers to see if they’ve got what it takes to make it in Hollywood.