Kevin McHale once found himself accidentally a part of something special.
The Glee alum recently revealed some new details behind the picture that launched a thousand rumors—that photo of Lea Michele and Cory Monteith looking extra cozy on the show's set. As it turns out, not only was the photo staged, but there was more to the story than even he realized at the time.
"I was like, 'I'm sitting across the room, what if I pretend to take a picture of Jenna? And in the background, the very edge of frame are Cory and Lea being a little extra snuggly,'" he revealed during the Dec. 21 episode of his And That's What You REALLY Missed podcast with fellow cast member Jenna Ushkowitz. And I said, 'I'll put it up and wait a little bit, for people to notice and then I'll delete it, like I did something wrong.'"
It was an ultimately successful attempt to, as he put it, "Get rumors started that Cory and Lea are dating, and then people will watch the show and then we'll get to make more seasons of it."
And as the 35-year-old explained, once Lea said she was game, they staged the photo and Kevin shared it to X, then Twitter, reading the many responses to the photo and deleting it upon the first mention of the cozy looking pair in the edge of frame.
"And then it got picked up," Kevin remembered, "and it was all over the entertainment sites."
But while the actor believed he had staged a relationship, in reality the pair—who ended up dating for over a year before Cory's untimely death in 2013—were already singing a love song when the photo was taken.
"Then in January was the SAG Awards," Kevin continued, "and we were at the after-party and Lea sits me down and she's like, 'Did you know, we had actually started dating then?'"
Yes, in a Glee-worthy twist, it turns out Lea and Cory's onscreen love as Rachel and Finn had already made it to real life when the photo was taken.
In the years since Cory's passing—the anniversary of which the Funny Girl alum often pays tribute to on social media—Lea has tied the knot with Zandy Reich, with whom she shares 2-year-old son Ever.
And for more on the Glee alum's IRL love lives, keep reading.