The couple reveal in this week’s Hola magazine that Nadal, 32, proposed on a romantic trip to Rome last May but chose to  keep the news private until now.

The couple, who have been in a committed relationship for 14 years, will marry later this year.

They started dating in 2005 when they were both teenagers after meeting several years before.

Perello, 30, has always shunned the media spotlight although she has been pictured courtside at some of Nadal’s biggest matches.

But she isn't always there. In a 2011 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Perello explained: “He needs his space when he is competing, and just the idea of me hanging around and waiting on his needs all day tires me out.

“It would asphyxiate me. And then he would have to be worrying about me… No. If I followed him everywhere, I think there's a risk we might stop getting along.”

She works in insurance and is a business graduate but also serves as project director for the Rafa Nadal Foundation, the charity which Nadal launched almost ten years ago.

In an interview with sports newspaper Marca last year, the world number 2 hinted that he wouldn't be ready to start a family until he had retired from tennis. 

'I keep my commitment with tennis and my happiness', Nadal told Marca. 'I enjoy both in tennis and outside it. I have a girlfriend too and I am not alone to take decisions.

“Having family? I don't know, things are not easy to be predict. At this age, I thought that I would have already been a former player and that I would have started a family.”

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