Real-Life Love
Jenny McCarthy Reveals How Donnie Wahlberg Romance Almost Never Happened
Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg might have celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary in August 2024, but their relationship could have easily never materialized — if fate hadn’t intervened.
The two are now the epitome of a loving couple, yet a small miscommunication could’ve prevented all that. Talking to Jennie Garth on her I Choose Me podcast, The Masked Singer judge opened up about her relationship with the former New Kids on the Block artist.
First meeting on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, McCarthy noticed that her future husband was a “nice man.” However, she didn’t flirt with him because she assumed that he was married. Wahlberg, who was single at the time, later confessed that Andy Cohen had pushed him to ask her out.
Although he didn’t do that right away, the two crossed paths again when he was a guest on The Jenny McCarthy Show. Ahead of him coming onto her turf, she did her “homework” on him. The 52-year-old admitted, “I’m like, who is he dating? He is not dating anyone.”
“Then, he sat down, and I started interviewing him, and I was like, ‘Oh, he’s very smart, oh, he’s very funny, oh, he’s really cute,'” she recalled. “What was supposed to be a nine-minute interview turned into a 90-minute one.”
Garth quipped, “That was like your first date.” McCarthy agreed, “Literally, there was so much sparks and chemistry that everyone in the audience was like ‘Oh my god.'”
After that, McCarthy had her assistant give Wahlberg her number. Not knowing what to do afterward, she played coy. While Wahlberg waited on her in his dressing room to say goodbye, his future wife became flustered. She recalled, “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 am too nervous.'” He wasn’t going to let her go that easily. An hour later, he was still waiting for her. McCarthy revealed, “I was so scared so I ran past his room, got in the elevator, and just hope he calls me.”
The Blue Bloods star didn’t exactly do that. McCarthy continued, “Two weeks go by, he doesn’t call me. He thought I just gave my phone number to everybody, that’s why I didn’t want to see him and I left.”
Luckily, destiny was on their side. “He saw a commercial of me asking a psychic on my show, talk show, if I was going to marry Donnie Wahlberg and the psychic was like, ‘Yeah,'” she divulged. “And this was before we even went on a date, but right after the episode, so he wound up calling me, and we went on our first date and then it was like game over.” The couple married in 2014.
