Cruise and Holmes first made headlines together by going out in Rome, where he accepted an award on April 29. Photo by: X17
Will Katie Say 'I Do'? | Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise
As usual, The Oprah Winfrey Show studio audience was in frenzied, decibel-busting hysterics. But the mood was much more subdued for one Toledo, Ohio, viewer of Tom Cruise's May 23 appearance on the show. Kathy Holmes watched as Tom Cruise, 42, jumped up and down like a kid on a sugar high, dropped to his knees as if he had just been knighted and strutted about the stage like the cocky agent he played in 1996’s Jerry Maguire.

All in the name of proclaiming his love for his 26-year-old girlfriend – and Kathy Holmes’s daughter – Katie. “I’m in love,” Cruise told Winfrey, later running backstage to pull the object of his affection before the cameras for several tender hugs and smooches. Viewing the spectacle on TV, Kathy told PEOPLE, was “surreal. It was nice. She looks happy. We’re happy for them.” Adds Holmes’s sister Tamera Fretti: “I’m very excited for her.” Asked to comment further on the relationship, however, she demurred: “I want them to enjoy as much privacy as they can.”