He hinted at it in an interview last month, and Thursday Charlie Crist took the plunge, asking his girlfriend, Carol Rome, to be his wife.

A bachelor for decades, Crist, 51, has been dating Rome for the past nine months.

"She’s special in every way," Crist said of his new finacee in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times’s Adam Smith, who broke the story.  "She’s brilliant, beautiful and sweet. I’m very, very lucky."

Crist did the honors in his hometown of St. Petersburg.  No wedding date between he and Rome, 38, has yet been set.

Crist, whose eleventh-hour endorsement of John McCain before the Florida primary proved crucial, has been talked about as vice-presidential timber.  But his bachelorhood has been widely seen as an impediment, especially in a party that derives many of its votes from cultural conservatives.