After Donnie Wahlberg realized Jenny McCarthy wasn’t going to be jealous of his New Kids on the Block fame, he decided that she was the woman for him.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, Wahlberg said his wife of over a decade never got jealous of his female fan base, even when he would kiss a different fan at the end of every show.
“Jenny, when we first started dating, like, one of the reasons I knew she was a great girl for me, among the many reasons, was I told her, I said, ‘Look, I’m in this band. My fans are going to be there. When I walk into a hotel with you, for example, and you know there are 50 screaming fans outside, I can’t just duck by and run into the hotel.'”
“‘I got to stop and take pictures. I got to stop and say thank you. I got to stop and sign autographs.’ And she said, ‘OK.’ And I said, ‘All right, are you going to be good with that?’ She said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take the pictures with you. I’m good,'” Wahlberg said.
JENNY MCCARTHY, DONNIE WAHLBERG KEEP MARRIAGE ‘SPICY’ WITH ‘SEXY ROOMS’ AND VOW RENEWALS
He continued, “Like, I knew right then. I was like, ‘Oh, she’s the one.’ I knew already, but you know, I did have that talk with her.”
WATCH: Donnie Wahlberg reveals how he knew Jenny McCarthy was ‘the one’
Wahlberg told Fox News Digital that McCarthy’s lack of jealousy showed him that she respected the bond he has with his fans.
At the beginning of Wahlberg and McCarthy’s relationship, the former Playboy model would go to Wahlberg’s shows and see him kiss a different fan every night.
“When Jenny and I started dating, we were putting a tour together. It was in 2013, and it was called ‘The Package Tour.’ So, I had this bit in the show where we sing this song called ‘Single,’ and I would kiss a fan every night.”
“Jenny came to a lot of shows on that tour. We were dating, it was new, and she was excited, and she loved coming to the shows. She would always sit through it and never say anything, never got jealous, never got upset,” Wahlberg said.
He explained that at this point in their relationship, McCarthy was getting several offers to host a talk show and opted to be on “The View,” since it was based in New York where Wahlberg was filming “Blue Bloods.”
“It’s like the second or third episode of ‘The View,’ and they had a 40-year-old guy on there who’d never been kissed before. The first few days, she’d come home and tell me how the show was going: ‘Yeah, this happened, and Barbara [Walters] said this, and Whoopi [Goldberg] did that, and it was fun, and we did this.’ And she didn’t really mention it to me.”
“So, I happened to just catch it on TV, and I’m like, ‘Oh, she volunteered to kiss the 40-year-old guy who’d never been kissed before, and she kept kissing him and kissing him and kissing him,'” Wahlberg said with a laugh.
He told Fox News Digital that at this point, he and McCarthy had only been dating for a few months.
“She was very mature about it. I was not as mature,” Wahlberg said.
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Wahlberg confronted McCarthy about her on-air kiss, and she said, “Do you know that I went to your concerts all summer long and watched you kiss someone all summer long? I never said a word. And now you’re going to give me crap for kissing this dude on my TV show? How do you think I felt all those months?”
Wahlberg said that at that moment, he made the decision to never kiss a fan at his shows again.
New Kids on the Block was founded in 1984 and consists of Wahlberg, brothers Jonathan and Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre and Danny Wood.
In 1989, the governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, declared that April 24 would be the official “NKOTB Day.”
According to Wahlberg, the reason New Kids on the Block Day still exists is because of the fans.
WATCH: Donnie Wahlberg talks New Kids on the Block day
“New Kids on the Block fans are so incredible, they refused to let it go away. They won’t let it be a one-time thing, so rather than resist, they are constantly celebrating it,” he said.
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This year, the ’90s boy band will celebrate “NKOTB Day” in Las Vegas.
