AFTER 32 YEARS, STEPHEN COLBERT’S WORDS ABOUT HIS WIFE ARE MELTING HEARTS EVERYWHERE ❤️

“I go like, ‘I can’t believe Evie McGee’s going out with me,’ because I mean, we grew up in the same town like, ‘Wow. Evie McGee, I must be doing okay,’” Colbert tells PEOPLE in his cover story interview.

The beloved host, 62, sat down with PEOPLE to discuss the end of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, how he got to the top of late night and what’s next. During the conversation, he was more than willing to talk about Evelyn, in fact, he gushed about her.

Colbert has said that when he first saw her, he knew that she was the woman he wanted to marry. While on Today in 2024, the late-night host told Craig Melvin that before he knew Evelyn, he was debating breaking up with someone he was dating. He went home to South Carolina think about it, and while at a show with his mother, he saw Evelyn in the lobby of the theater. “A little voice in my head said, ‘There’s your wife, you’re going to marry her,’” he said on Today.

Colbert tells PEOPLE, that after they met in May 1990, they wrote each other letters before their first date on December 26, 1990.

“Day after Christmas, Feast of Saint Stephen, so that’s auspicious,” he says. “And then we didn’t see each other again until February, I think it was around February 11th or February 9th. I know that Monday was the day before Mardi Gras, and I knew I would not see her again until Good Friday, and so I gave up Evie McGee for Lent.”

They got engaged on Dec. 22, 1992, with a little help from Wherry again.

“I was going to wait until December 26th, but my friend Scott Weary, he said, ‘No, man, you got to ask her before Christmas, because she’s going to want to show that ring on Christmas morning to everybody at church,’ and I said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ So December 22nd.”

Over the years, Evelyn has made numerous appearances on The Late Show. “Part of the joy for the audience is that she takes the piss out of me because she sure can,” Colbert says.

When asked if they ever fight, he jokes they might have squabbles like, “Did you not read my email that I sent you? We’ve got to make some decisions about whatever it is.” But assures, “No, we don’t really fight. We don’t really have Donnybrooks.”

“She’s great company,” he says. “I try to be equally good company. I don’t think I am as good company as she is.”

As Colbert contemplates what’s next in his career, he knows the one laugh he wants more than anyone else’s is Evelyn’s.

“We laugh a lot. She’s the best laugh,” he says. “She’s the laugh I want to get more than anybody else. That’s the best.”