Michelle Rounds: Get to Know Rosie O'Donnell's Fiancée

By Sara Hammel

01/02/2011 at 04:30 PM EST

Rosie O'Donnell met Michelle Rounds earlier this year and the pair were engaged within a matter of months. So who is the talk show queen's new fiancée?

1. She's got her own thing going on (and it's not showbiz).
Rounds, 40, is a recruiter for New-York based IT company Vertex Solutions Inc. and had an active career in the same arena before that. According to her LinkedIn profile, she graduated from State University of New York at New Paltz in 1993.

2. She loves coffee – or maybe it's a chai latte that drew her in.
Either way, she and O'Donnell first connected in a Starbucks over the summer.

3. She shares Rosie's fondness for dogs.
A conversation about Rounds's Pomeranian in the coffee shop is what first brought them together. "She was holding this little puppy and I thought to myself, 'There’s a cute young girl with a puppy' and I was looking for a puppy, right? So we started to talk," O'Donnell told PEOPLE recently.



4. She wants kids.
According to O'Donnell, Rounds confessed early on that she'd been thinking about having children. The actress told Nightline in October of her first meeting with Rounds: "'You know when you have a little puppy like that you’re gonna have a baby soon.' And she’s like 'Actually, I was trying … ' " When asked if she sees more kids in her future, O'Donnell, already mom to four children, told PEOPLE, "Yes, I do."

5. She's petite.
In fact, "She’s tiny," O'Donnell told PEOPLE of Rounds. "She’ll have to really layer" living in the frigid Chicago area, where O'Donnell's OWN talk show is based. "No listen, it’s just really, really nice," she added. "She’s a size two, can you imagine? I’m afraid I may kill her just cuddling in bed. 'Hey, spoon me.' 'Are you sure? It could be dangerous.' "

• Reporting by JULIE JORDAN