Joe Manganiello and Sofia Vergara — laughs and love make their marriage work
How can you keep a Hollywood marriage strong? Ask Mt. Lebanon native Joe Manganiello and he’ll likely credit humor.
Of course, enjoying your partner is also a plus.
“My life is great because I really like my wife,” Manganiello recently told Men’s Health, referring to his wife of nearly four years, actress Sofia Vergara. “I like hanging out with her. I like talking to her. I like goofing around with her.
“We … laugh all day long every day. It’s too much sometimes. My favorite thing in the world is making my wife laugh so much she cries. Like, she’ll laugh so hard she can’t breathe. It’s the best.”
Manganiello appears on the June cover of Men’s Health, which hits newsstands May 28.
“That’s the beauty of having somebody to share your life with. The other night I took my wife for shaved ice. It was super warm and beautiful. I went and parked and we rolled down the windows and just sang along to Cure songs while we ate our shaved ice. That’s the best.”
Manganiello is known for being obsessed with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“I mean, obsessed is an understatement,” Vergara told Jimmy Kimmel in a 2018 interview. Although she’s not really a big fan of the game, she said she loves joining her husband for games at Heinz Field.
“I love going to games, because it’s nice to eat the hot dogs and the energy of the people,” she said. “We have a great time. I love it.”
For his part, Manganiello says it’s their different tastes that make their marriage succeed.
“When we come home it works for us because in so many ways we’re opposites,” he told Men’s Health. “Masculine/feminine, yin and yang, whatever you want to call it. ‘Honey do you want to come watch the Steelers game?’ and she’s like ‘Do you want to come into my closet and look in my earring tray?’ When we’re at home we’re opposites in all the best ways and we’re compatible in all the best ways, and it works for us.
We have so much fun but it’s OK we do separate things and it’s totally healthy.”
Up to now, the couple haven’t worked together. Manganiello gained his fame through movies like “Magic Mike” and “Justice League” and the HBO series “True Blood.” Vergara has made her claim on ABC’s comedy “Modern Family.”
But that changed with their latest project, “Bottom of the 9th.” The drama has Manganiello playing a once-aspiring baseball player who returns to the Bronx after spending 17 years in jail for a violent mistake he made as a kid. Vergara plays his love interest. The movie, which Manganiello also produced, is set to his theaters July 19.
Vergara told Men’s Health that she loved working with her husband on a professional level.
“It was so much fun for me,” she said. “I wish I could work with him more. We shared a trailer and it was so great to drive to work and back together while rehearsing lines and drinking coffee. It was very easy for me to play the character that was in love with him. … It was hard for me to see him get upset or really sad in the scenes. It made me want to cry.”
Chris Pastrick is a TribLive digital producer. An Allegheny County native, he began working for the Valley News Dispatch in 1993 and joined the Trib in 1997. He can be reached at cpastrick@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.