Good guy dad Mark Walhberg is said to have popped the question to the mother of his two children, model Rhea Durham. He bought her a huge 5-carat diamond ring and it sounds like he’s ready to make it official:

Mark Wahlberg… has decided to ask his longtime girlfriend, Rhea Durham – the mother of his two children, Ella 4, and Michael, 19 months – to marry him. According to a pal of the 36-year-old actor, he bought a $150,000, 5-carat diamond ring for Rhea, 29, on October 15. “He thinks it’s the right time,” says the pal. “They’ve been together for a long time, they have these great kids, and at heart, he’s a family man.”

[From In Touch, print edition, November 12, 2007]

Wahlberg has replaced Ryan Gosling as the greiving father in The Lovely Bones, (not because Gosling was too plump as I reported earlier, but because he had creative differences with Peter Jackson and was possibly too young) and serves as executive producer for several television series and films. He will appear in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, due out next summer, and is announced in two other films, the follow up to The Italian Job, The Brazilian Job, and as boxer “Irish” Micky Ward in The Fighter.

As Wahlberg’s career is taking off, it seems like he’s happy at home. He spoke proudly in an interview this spring about changing his son’s poopy diaper and playing horsie with his three year-old daughter. Walhberg is a devout Catholic with a rosary tattoo on his neck, and considering his faith it only seems likely that he would marry the mother of his children.

Mark and Rhea are shown at the Oscars and in photos you may have already seen at the pumpkin patch on 10/14/07. Thanks to WENN.