What to Know About Southern Charm Star Madison LeCroy's New Fiancé Brett: 'I Found My Person'

Southern Charm's Madison LeCroy just announced the secret she's been keeping for nearly a week — she's engaged!

The Bravo star, 31, revealed during an Amazon Live Thursday that her boyfriend Brett popped the question last week after taking her on a belated birthday celebration with her 8-year-old son Hudson (whom she shares with her ex-husband).

PEOPLE caught up with the newly-engaged star, who admits she was "not expecting" the big proposal to happen when it did. "We traveled a lot this summer and I kind of thought it was going to happen around then," she says.

Jesse Volk

Jesse Volk

RELATED: Southern Charm's Madison LeCroy Is Engaged to Boyfriend Brett After 6 Months of Dating

Instead, Brett treated her and Hudson to a night out — complete with a limo ride! — and popped the question at home.

The next thing you know, we come back home and I'm thinking it's just a birthday dinner, and my son's over here jumping around, and I turn around and my fiancé is down on one knee and proposed to me in my living room," she says. "It was so intimate. I've been crying like crazy from joy. [I'm] so excited."

Jesse Volk

So who is her new fiancé and how did their whirlwind romance happen? We asked the star all the details on her man.

It was love at first sight.

The pair first met in April while they were both on friend trips in Arizona and LeCroy knew right away that he was the one: "He chased me out of the restaurant and he was like, 'I've got to get your number and I have to take you on a date.'"

LeCroy says she turned to her group of friends and said, "'That's him, y'all.' I was like, 'I'm marrying that man.' There's something about him that I've never felt before in my entire life. I knew right then."

After she told him she lives in South Carolina (he's based in California), she said he immediately jumped on a plane. "He's like, 'No problem, I'll fly to South Carolina,' and he flew the next day and took me on a date. [He's] very committed and made the effort."

She says at the time they were both actually dating people, "but once we met, we were like, look, this is it. I found my person."

He stays out of the limelight.

Unlike other guys she's been linked to in the past (like Southern Charm costar Austen Kroll, whom she dated for nearly three years), her new fiancé stays away from the camera.

"He doesn't do social media," says LeCroy, who is opting to keep his last name private for now. "I'll take his name eventually but I'll keep mine for business purposes. I'll probably hyphenate my name."

madison lecroy/ instagram

While she has been sharing sweet snaps of him more often on Instagram, fans shouldn't expect to see him make a cameo on the reality show anytime soon.

"My goodness, who wants to introduce anybody to your ex from a toxic relationship? So I'm going to try to protect that as much as possible," she says. "He's not a reality TV kind of person, so he's not going to go out there and cause a scene or anything."

He has a close relationship with her son Hudson.

"I think my family low-key loves him more than me. I'm happy about that. He's definitely been accepted," LeCroy says. And no one loves Brett more than Hudson.

"When we asked my son, 'What did you think the first time you met Brett? He said, 'That he was the one,'" LeCroy says. "I just lost it. I was like, 'You are so smart, I knew that too.'"

During her Amazon Live, she said the only ex's opinion on her engagement news that "means anything" to her is that of her ex-husband, Hudson's father.

"We made sure to call him and tell him before the news broke out. He was so happy for us. He was happy Hudson really adores my fiancé," LeCroy said during her live segment. "I've been lucky to have that support from my son's father, and that's kind of unheard of. But he was very supportive."

They're bi-coastal for now.

While Brett is still based in California and LeCroy is in Charleston, they've decided to "do bi-costal for a little while," she says. "I have my salon that is opening in two weeks as well. I'm so excited about that. He still has his house and everything in California so we're going to go back and forth until we find our roots."

They'll take their time wedding planning.

LeCroy says she isn't rushing to walk down the aisle just yet. "I'm thinking probably about a year, so I can come up with something fabulous, I hope," she says, adding that she wants a 50 or 70-person wedding.

But in the end, she's ready to start their new life together. "We haven't been dating a long period of time, but we both know what we want," she says. "Why wait any longer?"