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Joe Manganiello Shares the Secret to His and Sofía Vergara's Marriage

Joe Manganiello Shares the Secret to His and Sofía Vergara's Marriage


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Season 17 of America’s Got Talent is upon us and Sofía Vergara, 49, is ready for fans to see all the amazing acts the NBC talent show has in store. After the former Modern Family star made her debut as a judge in summer 2020, viewers instantly related to her. Now, even after running off the stage once or twice, the Colombian actress is back for the new season of AGT. While Sofia continues making her mark on the longtime series, there's no doubt that her husband of six years, Joe Manganiello, 45, will be cheering her on behind the scenes.

Joe's admiration of Sofía began before the actress had even broken up with her ex-fiancé Nick Loeb. The story goes that Sofía and Joe first met at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in May 2014. While walking around the event, the True Blood actor spotted Sofía across the room — immediately, he was smitten.

“She was wearing this dress that looked great on her, and I just could not take my eyes off of her," Joe gushed on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show. What's more, Sofía's Modern Family costar Jesse Tyler Ferguson approached Joe later on that evening and told him that his "friend Sofía want[ed] to come over and say hi."

With that, Sofía and Joe ended up having a casual conversation that resulted in a photo opp.

Photo credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/VF14
Photo credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/VF14

Three weeks later, Sofía and Nick officially announced their split.

“I hit up Jesse Tyler Ferguson and said, ‘Hey man, was she broken up with the guy at the time?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t have tried to pull anything if that wasn’t the case.’ I said, ‘Man, well, I don’t know what kind of emotional state she’s in, but tell her I want to take her out,'” Joe said.

One month later, Joe and Sofía ended up on their first date. Joe had flown from Los Angeles to New Orleans (where she was filming Hot Pursuit at the time) to make it happen. But while there, Joe revealed that the America's Got Talent judge spent the entire time casting doubt.

"Our first date was her giving me every reason why it would never work out,” he told Haute Living. “Like, ‘You’re too young, you’re an actor, you’re this, you’re that,’ and she was just doing it to hear herself say it. She was trying to talk herself out of going there.”

But it didn't work.

Photo credit: Michael Kovac
Photo credit: Michael Kovac

“She had just gotten out of a relationship and I knew that she wanted to be single,” Joe explained to the outlet. “But we knew right away, and she knew she was screwed. I said to her, ‘If you need to be single, go do it and do it now if that’s what you need to do,’ and she didn’t. She tried to stay away from actors and I tried to stay away from actresses as much as possible, because of the fear of being away from each other.”

Soon they were spotted hanging out together all over, and the two confirmed their relationship in August of 2014. Three months later, they posted photos on Instagram of themselves celebrating Thanksgiving together. That same month, they moved in with each other.

And then came the proposal on Christmas Eve while they were vacationing in Hawai'i. Although Joe wanted to pop the question outside, he told Haute Living that a paparazzi swarm made it impossible to do that, so he proposed inside by a huge window. "I had a whole speech prepared in Spanish. I proposed to her on one knee in Spanish with the sun going down. It was awesome."

In November 2015, the two walked down the aisle in Palm Beach, Florida, in front of about 400 guests (including their Modern Family and True Blood costars and Sofía's 30-year-old son, Manolo, from her previous marriage to Joe Gonzalez).

Today, the happy couple has been married for over six years. Besides seeing them step out for the occasional red carpet together, fans can catch glimpses of Sofía and Joe doing their thing on social media as well.

In August, 2020, Joe opened up to People about how he and Sofía have made their marriage work for nearly six years.

“I knew pretty quickly that I could trust her, and she knew pretty quickly that she could trust me,” he told the magazine. “And we’re both the kind of people who are capable of putting the other person ahead of ourselves. I was capable of putting her wishes ahead of mine, whatever they were, and she was capable of doing the same. Once you have that, you don't let go of it.”

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