Katie the Cougar admits that when her boyfriend asked her to marry him, it took her awhile to say "yes."

“I knew that I wanted this,” the TV newswoman said of finding a new spouse after her first husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in 1998.

“I made it a priority, and I pursued it with some purpose,” Couric, 56, told People magazine as she gushed about her Labor Day weekend engagement to John Molner.

Before meeting financier Molner, 50, Couric tried her luck with TV producer Tom Werner and eco-CEO Brooks Perlin, who was 17 years her junior.

Although she’d been hoping for another turn on the marriage go-round, Couric said she was shocked when Molner, 50, popped the question on a Hamptons beach.

“He said that there was a reason he’d brought me there to the beach, and that he loved me and was committed to me, and I said, ‘Yeah, I know that, you didn’t have to bring me here to tell me that,’” Couric recounted.

“Finally he said, ‘Couric, I’m trying to propose to you,’ ” she said. “And I was stunned. [It] took me a while to say yes, because I was so confused!”

H/T Page Six