Kristy Lee Cook may have lost her beloved horse in her attempt to become the “American Idol” but she left the show this week with a marriage proposal.

 Cook,  24, who won hearts by selling her horse to get to the “Idol” auditions last summer,  said her long time boyfriend popped the question on Wednesday night’s TV show when she was voted off the competition.

Cook told reporters after her exit that boyfriend Andy first proposed on March 15 — in the privacy of the sauna at the LA house where the Idols all live during the show!

He followed it up with a second more public declaration on April 16 elimination night. “It was really cool. He re-enacted the proposal and actually got down on one knee because the first time he didn’t. He owed it to me,” Cook said, with a laugh.

The pair are thinking of a June 2009 wedding but haven’t set a date yet.

As for her horse, Cook seemed reconciled to not getting him back. The new owner doesn’t want to sell him back “but he got a really good home so I’m happy with that,” she said.

You have to hand it to Kristy Lee Cook.

The 24-year-old country girl and latest “American Idol” casualty hung on to her slot on the show, apparently by the skin of her teeth, week after week after week. Despite seemingly endless attacks from the acid-tongued Simon Cowell, who predicted early in the competition that she would not make it past tenth place, Cook repeatedly appeared to defy the odds.

As Cook herself noted before her offing on Wednesday night, she sure proved Cowell wrong, coming in seventh place this season. Heck, she even lasted longer than that Aussie hunk Michael Johns. Who could have predicted that after sitting through her gruelling “Eight Days a Week” performance all those weeks ago?

So, it’s back to Oregon for Cook, where she already has her next challenge cut out for her. Forced to sell her beloved horse to pay for the trip to the “Idol” audition in Philadelphia, Cook told a fan who dialed into the show on Wednesday night that she wants to buy him back. The problem is, the man she sold it to doesn’t want to sell it back to her.

After delivering the news that Cook would no longer be part of the show, host Ryan Seacrest asked the man, on live television, to sell the horse back to her. A teary-eyed Cook also appealed to him for sympathy.

“Can I go ride my horse now?” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Call us crazy, but something tells us that the woman who not only proved Simon Cowell wrong, but also survived the show’s “bottom 3″ three times before finally getting the axe isn’t going to let one little person get between her and her horse. But maybe that’s just us.

It must have been conceived as some sort of cruel joke.

For seven seasons now, the judges of “American Idol” have repeatedly told contestants to steer clear of singing songs by Mariah Carey, ostensibly because the singing competition’s up-and-coming star wannabes could never hope to measure up to one of the great voices of pop music.

So, let’s just say it was a little strange to find Carey as the guest judge on Tuesday night’s show. Because you know what that means: the contestants were allowed to perform an old Mariah song, a new Mariah song, or any other Mariah song of their choosing.

As judge Simon Cowell predicted at the beginning of the show, the night indeed turned out to be lackluster one for the girls because of the unavoidable comparisons between them and the great Carey herself. That didn’t stop Cowell from delivering his usual barbs, however.

“It was a bit like ordering a hamburger and only getting the bun,” Cowell told Brooke White after her performance of “Hero.” “In other words the vital ingredient, the bit in the middle, was missing.”

Ouch.

The other girls — Syesha Mercado, Kristy Lee Cook, and Carly Smithson — emerged without being compared to fast food, but they didn’t get any overwhelming love from the judges.

The remaining three boys, however, put the judges in a festive mood. A leather pants-clad David Archuleta’s performance of “When You Believe” was declared the evening’s benchmark by Cowell, and David Cook’s rock take on “Always Be My Baby” received a standing ovation from judge Randy Jackson.

Later, Jackson likened Jason Castro’s take on “I Don’t Wanna Cry” to “a weird beach luau,” but Paula Abdul said it was a luau that she would “love to be at.” Cowell agreed with Abdul, saying that “the guys completely won the night.”