It was love at first sight for Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.

After meeting backstage at a concert in 2001, DeGeneres and de Rossi formed an instant connection. However, de Rossi hadn’t yet come out as a gay woman and DeGeneres had no idea how the Ally McBeal actress felt. It took three years for the pair to finally admit their feelings to each other and from there, things moved quickly.

The pair reconnected at an event in 2004 and began dating shortly after. By the following year, DeGeneres had said that de Rossi was her soulmate. Once gay marriage became legal in California in 2008, the couple tied the knot and have since grown more and more in love.

“She is the kindest, most generous, most loving, loyal, trustworthy person I have ever known. She’s a very special human being. Some of it sometimes rubs off on me,” de Rossi told PEOPLE in 2021.

From their first connection to their philanthropic efforts, here’s everything to know about Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s relationship.

2001: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi meet at a concert

DeGeneres and de Rossi met for the first time at a Rock the Vote concert back in 2001. At the time, de Rossi had not yet publicly come out as a lesbian, but later recalled that it was love at first sight. “I remember thinking that she was the coolest, most fascinating, beautiful, funniest person I’d ever met,” she later told PEOPLE.

The duo briefly chatted at the concert and ran into each other several times over the next few years — but it took some time for them to confess their mutual attraction.

“[I knew she was the one for me] when I first laid eyes on her,” de Rossi said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2009. “But it took me three years to actually tell her how I felt about her because I was on Ally McBeal at the time and I was not living as an openly gay person. I was closeted and very, very afraid that if I talked about being gay, it would be the end of my career. So, I wasn’t about to date the most famous lesbian in the world.”

In 2004, DeGeneres and de Rossi ran into each other again — a moment de Rossi later said changed everything for her.

“I ran into Ellen at a photo shoot about a year ago and she took my breath away,” de Rossi told The Advocate in 2005. “That had never happened to me in my life, where I saw somebody and [experienced] all of those things you hear about in songs and read about in poetry. My knees were weak. It was amazing. And it was very hard for me to get her out of my mind after that.”

At the time, the comedian and the Arrested Development actress were both in long-term relationships, DeGeneres with photographer Alexandra Hedison and de Rossi with singer Francesca Gregorini. After ending things with their respective partners, DeGeneres and de Rossi began dating.

“She had a girlfriend and I had a girlfriend, but it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we’re going to have an affair.’ We were just supposed to be together,” DeGeneres told PEOPLE in 2005. “It was a tough decision. I was physically getting sick because I was trying not to say anything. So I told Alex and she told Francesca. It was really hard to uproot everything.”

It was a big deal for her to be seen with me,” DeGeneres recalled. “The very first time we were photographed together was when I joined her at the Golden Globes afterparty. And that’s when everyone knew that we were together.”

August 2005: Portia de Rossi opens up about relationship with Ellen DeGeneres

Several months after quietly coming out, de Rossi spoke to The Advocate about her relationship with DeGeneres. She shared that they had a “very respectful, very loving, peaceful relationship,” which made her feel “not alone” for the first time in her life.