After three years of dating, Hargitay and Hermann said "I do" at a Santa Barbara chapel in August 2004. "I recited my vows so loudly, you could have heard them in Oregon, but Mariska's were quiet and small," Hermann shared with InStyle. The "Younger" star later revealed in a 2019 interview with People that he knew he wanted to marry Hargitay while at her 40th birthday party in January 2004.
"I actually saw Mariska with all of the people that she loved around her. It was like seeing this person who was now in the soil, that she was just dying to be planted in it. Right?" Hermann told People. "Which was this abundance of people and this abundance of love and I thought, 'I want to be part of that soil.' And that was the moment when I had not just parted the soil, but to be a lot of the soil. I think I got a look at what she is like when she is planted, when she is in the soil she's designed to be planted in. And I wanted to be that soil. Something like that!"
