Kristy Lee Cook's Idol Secret

Kristy Lee Cook's American Idol run was marked by a number of stays in the bottom three and, as it turns out, a secret engagement.

Cook's boyfriend popped the question in the sauna of her Idol apartment on March 15, days after she survived her first elimination round as a finalist.

The country-inclined singer was able to share this detail with reporters Thursday because she did not survive Idol's latest elimination round Wednesday night.

After an especially Byzantine results show, Cook, 24, was revealed to be the odd singer out, exiting in Mariah Carey week with the inaptly titled "Forever."

"I was kind of upset that I went home because I thought I was getting stronger and stronger," Cook said. "I thought ["Forever"] was my best performance so far. I thought I had at least another week in me."

Cook said her goal was to make the top five. In the end, she finished seventh.

No stranger to the bottom three—she was there four out of the last six weeks—Cook "built up a stamina for it." And so when host Ryan Seacrest divided the finalists into curious groups Wednesday night, Cook wasn't fazed, even if Carly Smithson was.

Smithson, Cook said, was convinced that Cook's group—she was sent to stand next to her nonrelation David Cook—was the safe group. "They're going to do something that's so off the wall," Cook said she advised the nonbelievers.

Cook was right. David Cook, the show's emotional favorite, was sent to safety—and to Smithson's group. Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White and Syesha Mercado ultimately comprised the unsafe group.

Cook took the opportunity of her exit to sing her swan song right in the face of her chief critic, judge Simon Cowell.

" 'Well, you made it awkward for me,' " Cook said Cowell told her. "And I said, 'Well, now you know how you make it for all of us.' "

Of Cowell, Cook said, "He didn't really get what I have. I still don't think he does."

On a happier note Wednesday night, Cook's boyfriend, whom she identified only as Andy, reproposed on the Idol set, dropping to his knee—a move he didn't do the first time out in the sauna. "He owed it to me," she said.

Cook didn't talk about her engagement earlier because of all the Idol-related madness that goes with being a finalist. "The first time we tried to keep everything on the down-low," she said.

There's no wedding date yet, although Cook guessed she might walk down the aisle in June 2009. And she more than guessed that she might invite the Idol judges, Cowell included.

"Oh, yes, of course I would," Cook said. "I definitely would."