Joe Manganiello Admits Sofía Vergara Was Really Reluctant About Dating Him

How Co-star 'Modern Family' of Sofía Vergara helped her meet her husband Joe Manganiello

Sofía Vergara, 47, is starting her next big project as a judge on America's Got Talent this summer. While on the NBC show the former Modern Family star shines, there's no doubt her four-year - old husband, Joe Manganiello, 43, will cheer her on behind the scenes. Joe 's love for Sofía began before the actress broke up with her ex-fiancé Nick Loeb. The story goes that in May 2014 Sofía and Joe met for the first time at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The True Blood actor spotted Sofía across the room as they walked around the event — and he was immediately smitten.

"She was wearing this dress that looked great on her, and I just couldn't take my eyes off her," Joe gushed on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show. What's more, Sofía's Modern Family co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson later that evening approached Joe and told him that his "friend Sofía wanted to come over and say hello."

Sofía and Joe ended up having a casual conversation which led to a photo-opposition. Three weeks later Sofía and Nick confirmed their split officially. "I hit Jesse Tyler Ferguson and said, 'Hey man, did she break up at the time with the guy? 'He said, 'Yeah, if that weren't the case, I wouldn't have tried to pull anything.' 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.

Joe and Sofía ended up on their first date a month later. Joe had fled to New Orleans from Los Angeles (where she was filming Hot Pursuit at the time) to make it happen. But while there, Joe revealed the American Got Talent judge was spending the whole time casting doubt.

"Our first date was to give me every excuse why it would never work out," he told Haute Living. "Like, 'You're too young, you're an artist, you're that, you're that,' and she was just doing that to hear herself say that. She was trying to talk herself out of going there." But that didn't function.

"She just got out of a relationship and I knew she wanted to be single," Joe told the outlet. "But we knew immediately and she knew she was being screwed. I told her, 'If you have to be single, go and do it now if that's what you have to do,' and she didn't. She tried to stay away from actors and I tried to stay as far away as possible from actresses, because of the fear of being away from each other.

They were soon spotted hanging out all over together and the two announced their relationship in August 2014. Three months later they posted photos of themselves celebrating Thanksgiving together on Instagram. They had moved in with each other that same month.

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

The two walked down the aisle in Palm Beach , Florida in November 2015 in front of around 400 guests (including their co-stars Modern Family and True Blood and Sofía's 27-year-old son Manolo from their previous marriage to Joe Gonzalez.

The happy couple today have been married for more than four years. In addition to seeing them step out together for the occasional red carpet, fans will even catch glimpses of Sofía and Joe doing their thing on social media. Looking back on her friendship with Joe, Sofía told Jimmy Kimmel that she is so happy she took a leap of faith, despite her initial reluctance to get involved with the star.