The bauble was stolen 10 years into her marriage to Desi Arnaz.

Lucille Ball entertained a generation as one-half of powerhouse duo Lucy and Desi, starring in I Love Lucy with on and off-screen husband Desi Arnaz. The couple’s whirlwind relationship predated their hit series—they eloped in November 1940, about six months after they’d met on the set of musical comedy Too Many Girls.

Ball and Arnaz had fallen fast—so fast that certain important details slipped their minds the day of their elopement. “Desi had planned to marry me at the office of Justice of the Peace John J.O’Brien,” Ball recalled in her posthumously published 1996 memoir, Love, Lucy. “He had forgotten only one thing, a wedding ring.”

Arnaz’s business manager came to the rescue, running to Woolworth’s and buying the bride a brass ring to mark her nuptials. The justice of the peace drove them into the Connecticut countryside and they at last said their ‘I do’s.’

While the plain ring had priceless sentimental value, Arnaz later gifted Ball a cushion-cut diamond and a flashier sparkler she called her “engagement ring” in her memoir. The latter had a stunning emerald-cut aquamarine stone set in a platinum band. Despite receiving the gorgeous upgrades, the legendary comic actress remained fond of her simple Woolworth’s piece. In Love, Lucy, she wrote that “that little discolored brass ring rested among the diamonds and emeralds in my jewel case for years.”

From its unique stone to its unfortunate disappearance, here’s everything to know about Lucille Ball’s engagement ring.

The ring featured an emerald-cut aquamarine on a platinum band.

Ball’s engagement ring had an emerald-cut stone. The classic style was a popular choice for A-listers of her era, with fellow actresses Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor famously receiving emerald-cut diamonds. Of course, the five-time Emmy winner’s ring had a key difference from theirs—its uncommon choice of jewel.

In lieu of the traditional diamond, Arnaz gave his wife an aquamarine. It’s unknown if Ball had any input in the ring-shopping process, but it’s popularly believed that Arnaz chose the colored stone to complement her blue eyes, per People. It also happened to be the actor’s birthstone, as he was born in March 1917.

Less is known about the cushion-cut diamond ring Ball received sometime after her elopement. She was photographed wearing it in 1943, with the image’s original caption describing it as “the ring chosen by herself as a Hollywood bride to be.”

The aquamarine jewel was 40 carats.

Arnaz didn’t skimp on size. As photos show, Ball adorned her ring finger with a massive stone following her 1940 elopement. In her posthumous 1996 memoir, the Television Hall of Fame inductee described it as “the forty-carat aquamarine engagement ring Desi had given me,” confirming its hefty size.

Neither Ball nor Arnaz confirmed the cost of the mega-carat bauble, but it undoubtedly tips the scale in comparison with other celebrity stones. Modern celebs who’ve received engagement rings over 30 carats include Jeff Bezos’s bride Lauren Sánchez and pop superstar Mariah Carey. However, it’s not easy to make a cost comparison with Ball’s jewel, as the price per carat of aquamarines differs from that of diamonds.

It was reportedly stolen from a hotel room in 1950.

Halfway through her marriage to the bandleader, Ball lost her colossal engagement ring. Ball recounts the morning of the alleged robbery, which was never solved, in her memoir. She describes how “[a]ll my jewelry was gone,” including the aquamarine ring.

According to Michael Karol’s Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, a newspaper reported the robbery on June 30, 1950. The quoted article from the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph described how “$6,000 in jewelry” was taken from the couple’s Chicago hotel room while they were out at night. The stolen goods included the ring, a 62-carat aquamarine pendant, and other gold pieces.

None of the jewelry—worth approximately $80,000 in 2025—was ever recovered, and no arrests were made.

Nicole Kidman wore a replica in Being the Ricardos.

In Being the Ricardos, the 2021 Aaron Sorkin biopic about I Love Lucy’s star couple, Nicole Kidman donned a recreation of the 40-carat aquamarine engagement ring in several scenes. The film’s costume designer, Susan Lyall, told People she tried “to learn about Lucille and Desi and their story, not just their characters, but who they were as people and as a couple and as a marriage and as professionals and business people and artists, and all of those things that makes for this very, very complex duo.”

Kidman also wore an original Eugene Joseff tassel necklace in the film that had previously been worn by Ball for publicity photos for the 1941 film Look Who’s Laughing, according to a Film Review Daily interview. “Costume designer [Susan Lyall] reached out to us with inspiration photos,” explained Kristin Joseff, Managing Director of Joseffs of Hollywood, a jeweler best known for creating costume jewelry for movie studios. “As we were flipping through them, we said, ‘Oh, actually, we have that in the studio,’”