The Young and the Restless’ Cricket and Danny Are Getting Engaged (Exclusive)

Lauralee Bell’s first thought when she found out her The Young and the Restless character Christine “Cricket” Blair was getting engaged to Michael Damian’s Danny Romalotti? “Finally,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively.

Bell, 56, and Damian, 63, spoke to PEOPLE ahead of their characters’ big engagement, which will take place during the July 10 episode of The Young and the Restless. “We were super, super excited,” Bell says, “Because it’s been 35 years in the making.”

Thirty-five years is perhaps understating it; that’s when Cricket and Danny got married for the first time in a destination wedding in Hawaii. Their romance first started years earlier via the then-teenage Cricket’s crush on Danny, which eventually evolved into a relationship. Their marriage ended when Danny slept with a fan, Michelle Stafford’s Phyllis Summers, who gave birth to their son Daniel (who, Danny learned years later, was never his biological son at all). 

All these decades later, Cricket and Danny are reaffirming their love. Bell thinks it’s perfect timing, since so many of the couple’s original fans are “in a different place in life” and trying to remember parts of their lives where they “felt safe and good.” 

“And we were a part of that time for them, and now here we are coming back into their lives when maybe their kids are now moved out or at college or whatever,” Bell says. “We’re reminiscent of those fun days where we all feel like we’re still young and we’d give anything to go back to that time. So we’re just very grateful that that group has stuck with us and is going to be so excited.”

“I think the nostalgia is really beautiful and that’s what they’re connecting to as well,” Damian says of the pairing’s fans. “I think that they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, finally.’ ”

“And we couldn’t wait much longer because … if one of us has to get down on a knee, perhaps it’s not going to be any prettier in 10 years,” Bell jokes. 

When Cricket and Danny reached supercouple status in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Bell says. “We would literally be out on weekends for public appearances, and that’s where we would really see how crazy it was.”

“That was fun,” Damian — whose real-life musical career became part of Danny’s character — remembers of meeting their “loyal” fans. Reflecting on what appealed about their fictional romance, the screen partners think part of the magic is that they “have a lot of fun.”

“The scenes that we had every day were extremely playful,” Bell says. “We were chasing each other around the apartment. We were putting ice down each other’s backs. We were tickling each other. We were playing strip poker. We were doing things that really draw people in because they feel like they’re watching your intimate moments.” The fact that their romance played out “over a very long period of time” also helped fans become deeply invested, they agree.

“I also think it’s so sweet about how at the beginning, you just wouldn’t think that the little groupie girl would get the rock star,” Bell says. “So I just think that that was part of the excitement of, ‘Could they be? Would they be?’ ” 

Damian says their romance “started out very sweet, very innocent,” and credits Bell’s dad — William J. Bell, who co-created the series with wife Lee Phillip Bell — for setting “it up beautifully.”

As for the couples’ upcoming on-screen wedding, neither actor knows what to expect. “It’s fun because I can imagine that there will be six people there or maybe half the cast. I have no idea,” Bell says. She promises to take fans behind the scenes on their journey down the aisle on her Instagram. Damian jokes that maybe Phyllis will let them marry at their house. 

But don’t expect Phyllis to bowl the couple over. Bell says that in her months off-screen — with Cricket on Danny’s world tour — Cricket “became a badass.” She doesn’t “care anymore” about Phyllis’ manipulations and jokes she might “just backhand her.”

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Despite their characters’ on-screen animosity, off-screen Bell and Damian love working with Stafford, 59. “We were rehearsing last week, and an hour went by and we finally said we have to run lines because we were laughing so hard,” Damian says. 

Bell says Stafford was nervous when she was hired in 1994 because she had to come between the “inseparable” Danny and Cricket. “And she did it from day one,” Bell says with admiration. 

“I would hope for the people who’ve been waiting for the wedding that [Phyllis] will obviously be scheming something, but that nothing affects the actual ‘I do,’ ” Bell says.

“Something is going to happen,” Damian predicts. “Maybe impersonating the priest.”

The Young and the Restless airs weekdays on CBS and the next day on Paramount+.