Breaking with tradition, the Newsnight host proposed to her husband Mark Gwynne in 2000 when the couple were on holiday in Mauritius.
However, after she did, he refused a suggested she made about their wedding day.
The revelation came during Emily’s appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show, which airs tonight on ITV.
She explained: “It was a really weird one because we’d flown on Millennium night – the 31st December 1999 – and everyone had said that ‘the planes are going to go mad, don’t go in the air, it’s all going to crash, the systems are going to go down’ and so we kind of went, ‘Sod it, let’s see what happens.’
“We didn’t have kids, we were happy, we were in love. We were kind of thinking, I don’t believe it.
“I just thought, I think it’s going to be fine. We went on this flight, it was amazing… They were doing the Can-can around the plane as midnight struck, it was amazing.
“That was the context in which we landed, it was a ‘happy-to-be-alive’ week. It was about day three [of our holiday] and I’d packed this white dress and I thought, ‘What have I got to lose?’
“And so I proposed and he went, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing, no.’ I was like, ‘We could get married on the beach on Friday, I’ve packed a dress.’ So he said yes to the proposal but no to [getting married there and then on the beach].
“He was right, because he realised it would have hurt a lot of people and a lot of loved ones back home.”
Emily and Mark married and went on to have two sons, Milo and Max.
While appearing on the ITV chat show, Emily also spoke about her Brexit eye-roll that went viral last month.
Following the second defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, Emily interviewed a panel of MPs.
But as Labour MP Barry Gardiner explained what his party’s stance would be on Brexit in their manifesto if an election were held in the following week, Emily appeared to give an exasperated eye-roll.
Emily explained what was going on in the moment, saying: “I didn’t even register doing it.
“I think we’ve all been consuming too much Fleabag haven’t we?” she said referring to the BBC comedy where the main character frequently breaks the fourth wall.
She continued: “It wasn’t that I disagreed with a policy, I’d just been speaking to the Conservative Minister, then I went to the Labour Minister and I was just like, ‘Somebody please just tell me the truth, please just explain your position’ because neither one of them had.
“My job is just to elicit some kind of sense for the audience, some sort of an answer that makes sense, that’s what everyone watches us for, they don’t want my opinion but they do want me to try and understand what they are telling us.”
Emily was appointed as Newsnight’s lead presenter earlier this year as she replaced Evan Davis.
On her new appointment, Emily said: “I am delighted to be moving into this role at a time when Newsnight feels so pivotal to our understanding of this extraordinary moment in British history, and to be working with such an exceptional team.”
The Jonathan Ross Show airs tonight at 9.20pm on ITV.