Aretha Franklin Engaged

Aretha Franklin and Willie Wilkerson arrive at Aretha Franklin's birthday dinner at the Park Lane Hotel in New York.

Monica Morgan/WireImage

Congratulations are in order for the Queen of Soul: she's getting married.

Today Aretha Franklin told the Associated Press that she and "longtime friend" William "Willie" Wilkerson became engaged over the holidays. She added that the couple is mulling a summer wedding in Miami Beach with a reception to follow on a private yacht, and that she is considering ordering a custom dress from one of three prominent designers: Valentino, Donna Karan or Vera Wang.

The powerhouse singer has fully recovered from her recent health concerns, with a doctor telling her that surgery she underwent a year ago could add 15 to 20 years to her life. She certainly sounds happy: the 69-year-old Franklin, who has been married twice before, joked to the AP, "No, I'm not pregnant."

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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