Actor Joe Manganiello reluctantly puts up with the media intrusion into his personal life because his wife Sofia Vergara makes it all worth it.
The Magic Mike hunk was thrust into the limelight in 2014, when he first began dating Modern Family beauty Sofia, and Joe admits the sudden increase in tabloid attention was tough to adjust to.
“I was never part of a celebrity couple before this, because I never wanted to go through the difficulty that can bring in terms of paparazzi and attention,” he tells Ocean Drive magazine. “Those people want to interfere with your serenity; they want to interfere with your relationship. They want to write things that hopefully will instigate trouble in your relationship so they can sell magazines or get clicks. It’s a really insidious side of the business, as I’ve found out.”
However, Joe and Sofia knew there would be little option to keep their relationship under wraps once word of their romance got out.
“The two of us knew that once it became public that we were together – and we had conversations about how that would change a lot of things, and she is the only woman on the planet that I was willing to go through all of that for. Because she’s the greatest,” he smiles.
While some couples crack under the intense press scrutiny, Joe claims it has only strengthened his bond with the Colombian actress, who became his wife in November, 2015 after a whirlwind romance.
“All that pressure has just brought us closer together,” he says. “It’s not something that we welcome into our lives. We try to stay private. At the end of the day, it’s really nobody else’s business but ours. It’s just that I love her and she loves me and here we are. And there is a price for that, when living in the public eye.”
Joe also opens up about the ease of their relationship, insisting it was clear from the very start they were meant to be together.
“From the first date, it was just like, ‘Wow!'” he recalls. “It was so easy in all the ways that you want it to be easy, and challenging in all of the most fun ways possible. So I knew right away and that was it.”
“I just married the girl that I love. That was it,” he adds. “I really do believe that we were put on the planet to be with each other.”
