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Matthew McConaughey Recalls That Time His Future Wife, Camila Alves, Rejected Him: What He Told Howard Stern

She made him work for it! Matthew McConaughey recalled that time his future wife, Camila Alves, rejected him at the start of their relationship, during a Tuesday, January 17, interview on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show. Listen to what he had to say in the video above!

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The Gold actor, 47, told Stern, 63, that the Brazilian-American model, 34, definitely played hard to get when he first met her at a Los Angeles nightclub in 2006 — even though he was already a bona fide movie star and had recently released two feature films: Failure to Launch and We Are Marshall.

“So I’m healthily single at a club on Sunset [Boulevard]. I’m not even a club guy, but I was a club guy. And I’m making margaritas at the end of the table, and this figure moves across the room. And I remember [saying] to myself, ‘What is that?’ I didn’t say, ‘Who is that,’ I said, ‘What is that?’” McConaughey recounted. “She sits down, and I can’t get my eyes off her, and I’m waving, trying to get her [attention]. … I go over and introduce myself.”

He continued: “And I go, ‘Would you and your friends like to come over and have a drink?’ She came by herself. Now we sit down, music’s playing. I make a margarita. That night I spoke 25 minutes of the best Spanish I’ve ever spoken in my life. She spoke Portuguese. I don’t think I ever understood Portuguese as well as I did that night. I was focused. It worked.”

Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves arrives at the 20th Annual Hollywood Film Awards on November 6, 2016 in Los Angeles, California.
Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves arrive at the 20th Annual Hollywood Film Awards on Nov. 6, 2016, in Los Angeles.

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According to McConaughey, sparks were flying, so he asked Alves if she would like to come back to his house after leaving the club. “So we go back to the house and continue the party for a while to extend the time. I’m trying to extend the time.”

But when Alves wanted to leave, the Dallas Buyers Club star told the brunette beauty that she should just sleep over in one of his spare bedrooms. “And now she’s like, ‘OK, I’m gonna go. I’m gonna get a cab.’ And I’m like, ‘Don’t do that. It’s way too late,’” he said to Stern. “Take the guest bedroom.’”

She agreed, but when McConaughey snuck down into the guest bedroom “twice that night,” Alves turned down the Texas native’s advances. The Oscar winner told Stern that his future spouse didn’t even give him a kiss.

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McConaughey then told the shock jock that he woke up the next morning to find Alves “holding court with [his] buddies and our housekeeper, eating breakfast like they’d been buddies for 10 years.”

“That’s a woman who knows herself. … There [was] no walk of shame,” he said of the moment. “She stayed over, and she knows who she is.”

Later that day, McConaughey asked Alves out on a date, but she denied him because she had to celebrate her father’s birthday. After two more tries, she eventually gave in and agreed to come over to McConaughey’s home, where he cooked for her — which apparently won her over.

The couple, who now share kids Levi, 8, Vida, 7, and Livingston, 4, got engaged on Christmas Day 2011 and tied the knot in June 2012.

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