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Stephen Colbert spent years hiding behind the mask of his arch-conservative, argumentative character "Stephen Colbert" on The Colbert Report. And while his persona feels more vital than ever in the age of Donald Trump, he's let it go to be himself on The Late Show.

And a recent clip shared by the show demonstrates why it was the right decision. Colbert answers questions from the audience before every Late Show taping, and one fan asked how he knew his wife, Evelyn, was the one.

Colbert launched into a beautiful, heartfelt tale of realizing he didn't want to marry his current girlfriend, then running into Evie at a show and realizing the two had grown up together. Then, with the fateful intervention of a poet's son and a smattering of The Odyssey, it was clear the stars aligned between the two of them.

(And because Colbert is nothing if not a nerd, he corrected himself in a Facebook post, saying the "sneeze" in his story "is not from the Nausicaa episode, it's Penelope during Odysseus' return to Ithaca." But of course you knew that already, right?)

He and Evelyn "Evie" McGee-Colbert have been married since 1993, and they have three children together. They spoke with Oprah Winfrey about their relationship, and Evie shared even more romantic details—just in case he didn't already make every other husband on Earth look bad.