Sara Bareilles Says She’s ‘So Proud’ of Partner Joe Tippett for Nine Years of Sobriety

Sara Bareilles is celebrating a major milestone in her fiancé Joe Tippett’s life.

On Jan. 1, the Grammy winning singer-songwriter, 45, marked Tippett being nine years sober on Instagram.

“Nine years sobriety. So proud of this man,” Bareilles wrote of the actor/singer while resharing Tippett’s message about the accomplishment.

“It has been nine years since my last drink…” he wrote in his own Instagram post.

The milestone comes two years after the “Love Song” artist announced her engagement to Tippett on New Year’s Day 2023. 

“Yes to marrying this man. It’s an easy, earned, relaxed YES,” she wrote at the time.

In March, she shared more details of the couple’s engagement during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, revealing that Tippett, 42, didn’t have an engagement ring when he popped the question.

“Yeah … It was a spontaneous moment and so, in spontaneous times, sometimes you forget elements and he did forget the ring,” she told host Seth Meyers. “But it was just downstairs in the hotel room! So he asked me and I said yes and then he said, ‘I’ll be right back!'”

“We’ve been together for eight years,” Bareilles explained while responding to the “when you know, you know” saying by agreeing “in a way, you know.”

At the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Waitress, the Musical – Live on Broadway! in June 2023, Tippett told PEOPLE that the proposal happened in Mexico City after the pair — who first met while working together on the musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 film Waitress in 2015 — had long talked about getting engaged.

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“We had been looking for the perfect ring and couldn’t find it,” Tippett recalled. “And I was like, ‘I just want to do it!’ So we found this cheap little ring in a market that we both love, and we were like, ‘That’s the thing for now!’ ”

“We were up on a roof at sunset, the sky was on fire and we were listening to music and slow dancing, and it was like, ‘OK, now!’ ” he continued. “I asked and she said yes and I was like, ‘Well f—, I forgot the ring, I have to go down and get it!’ So then I came back up, got down on one knee, we did the deal and it was great.”

Later, Tippett upgraded the ring, swapping it for a gold piece he found “at an antique store upstate.”