"One Tree" Couple Engaged

Wed., Jul. 14, 2004 11:15 PM PDT by Sarah Hall

Sorry, girls, Chad Michael Murray is officially off the market.

The hunky 22-year-old thesp recently popped the question to Sophia Bush, his costar on the WB's One Tree Hill.

On the show, Bush, 22, plays a bad-girl cheerleader whose lustful crush on Murray's brooding basketball player character is unrequited. In real life, however, Murray is smitten by the woman he has been dating for less than a year.

"She's perfect," he gushed about his fianc?e to USA Today. "She keeps me inspired, and she complements me very well. She's a neat freak, and I'm dirty. I can't help it. I wrestle with the dogs every day. We watch football on the weekends and keep our life to ourselves."

The pair got engaged two months ago in Australia, where Murray was shooting a remake of the horror film House of Wax, costarring Paris Hilton.

A true romantic, Murray treated his bride-to-be to a day at the spa, followed by shopping and dinner before returning home and producing a ring that he helped design.

"I couldn't bring her home until the sun went down, because I had 500 candles and 20 bouquets of roses set up," Murray told USA Today. "Then I had this big light strand on a tennis court with a message [spelled out] to her that you could see looking down from the balcony of our 18th-floor penthouse."

Though Murray won't reveal exactly what the message said, it worked--Bush promptly accepted his proposal. The pair will tie the knot in a ceremony organized by her parents some time next year.

Before landing his One Tree Hill gig, Murray was already well known to teen-friendly audiences for his roles on Gilmore Girls and Dawson's Creek, as well as in Freaky Friday opposite Lindsay Lohan. His latest big-screen project, A Cinderella Story with Hilary Duff, opens Friday.

Despite a full slate of PG-projects, Murray isn't thrilled by his designation as teen heartthrob.

"I'm not satisfied right now, not at all," he told USA Today. "But you got to do what you got to do to get where you want to be."

Bush, too, is slowly making her way up the Hollywood ladder. After being crowned queen of Pasadena's Tournament of Roses Parade in 2000, she landed a tiny part in the film National Lampoon's Van Wilder with Tara Reid, before getting her role on One Tree Hill. She was briefly cast in the leading-lady role in 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but she was replaced by Claire Danes because the director thought Bush looked too young. Last year, she appeared in three episodes of Nip/Tuck as a malevolent teenage bisexual.

One Tree Hill returns to the WB this fall to begin its sophomore season. The show finished its first season as the second-highest rated drama among female teens, trailing only Fox's The O.C.