George Clooney Amal Clooney
Actor George Clooney (L) and lawyer Amal Clooney enter the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum on May 07, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Ray Tamarra/GC Images)

For George Clooney, it really was love at first sight. This week, the Catch-22 actor detailed how he met and fell head-over-heels for his now-wife, Amal Clooney. The couple married in 2014, and he says no one was more surprised he was a wedded man than himself.

“The truth was I met this amazing woman and she took my breath away,” Clooney told co-hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett of the Smartless Podcast . “She was brilliant and funny and beautiful and kind. I was sort of swept off my feet.”

“We got engaged after a few months and got married within the first year that we met. It surprised me more than probably anybody else in the world — and everybody else was pretty surprised!” he continued.

The actor and director was a bachelor for about two decades before meeting the human rights lawyer. Clooney was married to actress Talia Balsam from 1989 to 1993 and vowed he would never get married again in an interview with Barbara Walters in 1995.

“How do you know you won’t marry again?” Walters asked.

“Because I wasn’t very good at it,” he replied.

George Clooney Amal Clooney
LONDON, ENGLAND – MARCH 12: Amal Clooney and George Clooney attend a dinner to celebrate The Prince’s Trust, hosted by Prince Charles, Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace on March 12, 2019 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, President, The Prince’s Trust Group hosted a dinner for donors, supporters and ambassadors of Prince’s Trust International. (Photo by Chris Jackson – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Amal admitted in 2018 that she believed she’d never meet “the one,” until she spent time with Clooney.

“I met George when I was 35 and starting to become quite resigned to the idea that I was going to be a spinster,” she told the audience. “Then we met and started hiding out in my London flat and very soon it felt like, no matter what happened, I would never want to be with anyone else.”

Speaking on the proposal, Clooney said he was left hanging for 20 minutes before receiving a response.

“We never talked about marriage when we were dating. And I asked her out of the blue,” Clooney told CBS. “Took her a long time to say yes.I was on my knee for like 20 minutes. I finally said, ‘Look, I’m gonna throw my hip out.'”

And the rest is history.