Joe Manganiello Admits Sofía Vergara Was Really Hesitant
Sofía Vergara, 47, is starting her next big project as a judge on America's Got Talent this summer. While the former Modern Family star shines on the NBC show, there's no doubt that her husband of four years, Joe Manganiello, 43, 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 — and 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 co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson approached Joe later on that evening and told him that his "friend Sofía want[ed] to come over and say hi."
And so, Sofía and Joe ended up having a casual conversation that resulted in a photo opp.
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.
“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 Hawaii. Although Joe wanted to pop the question outside, he told Haute Living that a paparazzi swarm made it impossible to do that, and 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 co-stars and Sofía's 27-year-old son, Manolo, from her previous marriage to Joe Gonzalez).
