Jenny McCarthy is opening up about the unconventional way she and her husband, Donnie Wahlberg, first got together—and it turns out the couple had a little help from an unexpected source (or two).
During her appearance on the latest episode of iHeartRadio’s I Choose Me podcast with Jennie Garth, McCarthy recalled her first meeting with Wahlberg in 2012.
🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬
“So we actually met on Watch What Happens Live, Andy Cohen‘s show,” McCarthy, now 52, explained, adding, “He was the second guest in the second chair, and I’d never met him before. And I thought he was married, so I didn’t really flirt with him. I was just like, ‘Oh, you’re a really nice guy.’ Like, I had no idea Andy Cohen was like, ‘You gotta ask her out.'”
Wahlberg, 55, didn’t end up asking her out, but six months later, he was a guest on McCarthy’s VH1 talk show, The Jenny McCarthy Show.
“So I’m doing my homework. I’m like, okay, who is he dating? He’s not dating anybody. Still wasn’t thinking anything,” she remembered.
“Then he sat down and I started interviewing him, and I was like, wow. He’s very smart. Oh, he’s very funny. Oh, he’s really cute,” she continued. “And then the interview was supposed to be nine minutes. It was ninety.”
Apparently, McCarthy and Wahlberg had “so much sparks and chemistry that everyone in the audience was like, oh, my God.” It even pushed McCarthy to ask her assistant to slip Wahlberg her digits.
Related: Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy Open Up About Effect of ‘Past Trauma’ on Their Relationship
“So he wound up waiting for me in his dressing room to say goodbye,” she explained. “But, I was so flushed like a little high school girl. My face was red, and I was like, I can’t walk past him, I can’t walk past him. I’m too scared. I’m too nervous…and I’m like I just hope he calls me.”
After two weeks, unfortunately, Wahlberg still hadn’t called.
“He thought I just gave my phone number to everybody,” McCarthy said. “That’s why I didn’t want to see him when I left when, really, I was like a 12-year-old little girl, like all freaked out.”
It wasn’t until Wahlberg saw a commercial of McCarthy asking a psychic on her talk show, “If I’m going to marry Donnie Wahlberg.”
The psychic’s answer is what the Two and a Half Men alum claimed finally forced Wahlberg to pick up the phone.
“And the psychic was like, ‘Yeah,’” McCarthy said. “And this is before we even went on a date, okay? But it was right after the episode, so he wound up calling me. We went on our first date, and then it was game over.”
Wahlberg proposed in 2014, and the couple tied the knot later that same year.
Next: Donnie Wahlberg Says Goodbye to ‘Blue Bloods’ and Reveals Important Piece He Took With Him (Exclusive)
