That's the way it's been with my wife and me for
50 years. Although, I can think of a few exceptions. My wife ordered a Shiloh-Sharps .45-110 (like Quigley's) for me for our 25th wedding anniversary (25 years ago) and she didn't tell me about it, didn't even tell me she'd already paid the deposit, until the day
of our anniversary.
I did kind of the same thing last October when I bought my wife a Ruger "American Rimfire" .22LR for her birthday. It wasn't exactly the same thing though - my wife had been looking at those little Ruger .22s for a while, and she and I together had already decided that she should get one with a composite stock so that she could just order the components from Ruger to make the stock fit - she's only 5'1" with short arms to match.
At any rate, the store where we were looking at Ruger American Rimfires didn't have one with a composite stock. So we just put it off, and as luck would have it, I ran across one just like we wanted in Sportsman's Warehouse a few weeks later - just about a week before my wife's birthday. So I bought it, and surprised her with it on her birthday.