Bobby Brown proposes to Alicia Etheridge on stage at concert

The ex-Mr. Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, proposed to his longtime girlfriend and manager Alicia Etheridge on stage at a concert in Jacksonville’s Metro Park on Friday night.

Brown was playing a show for Funk Fest when his girlfriend of three years (and mother to his 11-year-old son Cassius, who was present on stage, too) joined him. Attendees say that Brown then got down on one knee and asked Etheridge to marry him in front of excited fans:

Paul and Carol Pearsall, who lives on the Westside, said the proposal was shocking, as Brown got down on one knee to ask for his girlfriend’s hand in marriage.

“We shouted, we screamed,” Carol Pearsall said. “We supported him.”

“Hopefully he’ll get it right this time,” her husband quipped.

Pearsall was referring to Brown’s ill-fated marriage to troubled singer Whitney Houston. The marriage lasted 15 years and produced one child, Bobbi Kristina, who is now 17-years-old. The pair took part in a reality show titled Being Bobby Brown in the earlier part of the decade that openly showed the couple’s marital troubles and struggles with substance abuse.

Houston spoke during promotions for her most recent album last year about the end of her troubled marriage to Bobby Brown:

“He was my drug,” Houston, 46, said. “I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together, and we were partners, and that’s what my high was — him. He and I being together, and whatever we did, we did it together. No matter what, we did it together.”

In addition to baby Cassius and Bobby Kristina, Brown has three other children from previous relationships. The marriage to Etheridge will be his second.