Monsters Star Leslie Grossman Opens Up About Engagement to Fiancé Sascha Penn: ‘Lucky We Met’ (Exclusive)

Grossman first revealed she was engaged during an appearance on the Oct. 22 edition of the I Choose Me with Jennie Garth podcast hosted by her What I Like About You castmate Jennie Garth. At the time, she didn’t reveal Penn’s identity. 

The American Horror Story star tells PEOPLE the pair first met on a dating app in early 2022.

“Isn’t that wild? My therapist said to me, I was very resistant to going on dating apps, and she said to me, ‘You need to do it for two months.’ It was my homework assignment,” Grossman explains. “She said, ‘You’ve got to do it for two months.’ And we connected at the very end of that two months. It was like the day my two months were up.”

Although dating apps were “a real learning curve” for Grossman, it was easy for her to say “yes” to Penn when he got down on one knee this summer. 

“It was very private and perfect and exactly what I would’ve wanted,” Grossman says of the proposal. “The most perfect proposal I could have asked for.”

For the engagement ring, Penn chose an oval diamond that’s around three-and-a-half carats with a gold band.

“It’s beautiful and simple and classic and just what I would’ve picked had I picked it out for myself,” she says. “He did an excellent job.”

As for wedding planning, the pair haven’t started just yet. 

“I’m just really enjoying being engaged and I want to be here right now, in this moment,” Grossman tells PEOPLE. “And whatever it is, it’s going to be very small and intimate and just about us.”

She adds, “I feel very fortunate that I have this wonderful thing to look forward to with so much change happening in my life, but positive and really wonderful change. And look, everybody in life has difficult times. I am no exception. So when good things happen, I really now embrace them and understand how rare and lucky that is.”

Grossman was previously married to Jon Bronson for 20 years before they split in 2020. They share daughter Goldie, 17.

“When it’s the second time around, I think you approach things so differently,” Grossman says.

“I want to protect this as much as possible. It is so lovely how happy people have been for us, and I embrace that and I love it,” she says. “And I also want to lean into keeping as much of it private as I can to preserve the specialness of it.”

Grossman hopes her experience can inspire single women in their forties, fifties and beyond.

“You get to make the rules. You get to decide what your future is,” she says.

She continues, “To be a woman and to be single in your late forties, 50, whatever, any age really over a certain number, culture and society tells women, ‘it’s over for you’ and ‘it’s not going to happen,’ that men have different opportunities that women do. And I would just like to say that you don’t have to believe that. You don’t have to accept that as the reality. You can decide to forge your own path. I think women are told so many negative things about what it means to be older, and we don’t have to accept that.”

“And I think what you need to be able to say to yourself is, ‘Well, who says?’ That’s not my story and I’m not going to allow that to be my story. You’re allowed to decide what your reality is, not what culture or society tells you.”