It famously took forever for Tom Schwartz to propose to Katie Maloney. At Scheana Shay’s wedding, Schwartz got his girlfriend alone and took out a jewelry box, leading Katie to fear he was about to propose at someone else’s wedding. Instead, he pulled out a ring on a necklace, which Katie was not happy with. “It’s not really what a girl pushing 30 wants to hear,”she told him. “At this point in our relationship, a ring should have strings attached, not attached to a string. I felt like it was a pacifier without really having to make commitments,” she wrote in a blog for Bravo.
An actual proposal followed, and in 2016 they were soon wed in front of their closest friends and family (and the Bravo television crew). The wedding was officiated by none other than the namesake of “VPR,” Lisa Vanderpump herself. Reading out their vows, she asked Katie if she took Tom as her husband “for richer and for richer,” drawing big laughs from the audience.
Afterwards, Lisa gave them her gift: a business proposal for Schwartz and his best friend, Tom Sandoval. She told the Toms that she and her husband were considering opening a new restaurant in West Hollywood, adding, “A bar always needs a face, and we were thinking of calling it TomTom.” The commitment-phobic Schwartz immediately replied, “I can’t let you do that. If it fails, it’s on us!” He would ultimately come around, and TomTom was born.