Padalecki proved more traditional than Cortese: “He wanted our pictures taken after we were married. It was really important to him to NOT see me in my dress,” Cortese said.

And Padalecki had already scored considerable points with her family by calling her stepfather and her two brothers to ask for her hand. The two were in New York, her mother said, and Padalecki suggested a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a place they had frequented. There, in front of their favorite painting, “Joan of Arc,” painted in 1879 by French realist Jules Bastien-Lepage, he proposed. “We knew it was happening and were just waiting for the call,” Batt recalled.