Kaley Cuoco Knew She Wanted to Have a Baby With Tom Pelphrey ‘When We Met’

Having a baby wasn’t on Kaley Cuoco’s “radar” until she met her current partner, Tom Pelphrey.

“This was not a goal of mine,” Cuoco told Emmy Magazine in an interview published two months after the Based on a True Story actor welcomed her first child, Matilda Carmine Richie Pelphrey. “As a young girl I dreamed of it, but I became involved in my career. Then when we met, it was instantaneous—‘Oh, my God, I want to have a kid with you.’”

She’s not kidding. The couple met last year at a party for Pelphrey’s series Ozark before going public with their relationship in May 2022. Just five months later Cuoco announced that she was pregnant with her first child. “💕Baby girl Pelphrey coming 2023💕 beyond blessed and over the moon,” she captioned the Instagram photos in October 2022. “I 💓you @tommypelphrey!!!”

“We both wanted it so badly, which was not what I thought my life would be,” Cuoco told Emmy Magazine. “I love my career and wanted to just keep living my life. But Tom came along, and something changed. We’re not 20, so we felt like we probably couldn’t wait too long. Then we got so blessed—it happened right away.”

With two actors for parents, is baby Matilda destined to join the family business? “It’s in her genes; I don’t know how she won’t,” Cuoco said. “The child already thinks she’s the star of everything.”

Kaley Cuoco has been married twice before meeting Tom Pelphrey—first to Ryan Sweeting from 2013 to 2016, and then to Karl Cook from 2018 to 2021. In her April 2022 Glamour cover storyCuoco said she still believes in love but will “never get married again.”

“I know that they’re out there,” she said. “I like being someone’s partner and having that companionship. We’ve all been there where you think, Oh, my God, I’m never going to meet someone else. And you do. There are great people that come into your life and they leave your life. And there are reasons for all of it. The minute that I agree to let it go, someone else magical comes into my life.”

On March 30 she welcomed her and Pelphrey’s baby girl. “Introducing, Matilda Carmine Richie Pelphrey, the new light of our lives!” Cuoco wrote on Instagram at the time. “We are overjoyed and grateful for this little miracle 💓 Thank you to the doctors, nurses, family, and friends who have helped us immensely over the last few days. We are blessed beyond belief 💗 @tommypelphrey didn’t think I could fall even more in love with you, but I did 💗.”