Getting engaged doesn't always live up to the hype.
Just ask Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller, who on Tuesday told Conan's Conan O'Brien the process of proposing to girlfriend Kate Gorney "hurt so much."
Let's backtrack. The 33-year-old actor got on the topic of marriage while explaining to Conan that his colorful socks "were given to me by my wife..."
He quickly corrected himself, though, comically struggling (and failing) at a pronunciation of fiancée. "Well," he admitted, "I call her my wife because I don't know how to pronounce...[fiancée]."
Hey, it's a tough one. And T.J. might not know how to say the word, but he wanted to make sure the woman who would become his [fiancée] had a memorable engagement experience! So, he took his future bride-to-be to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "because she is a work of art," he said, smiling as the audience cooed over his line.
It wasn't all picture-perfect, though. "What they don't tell you," he said, "is that when you get down on your knee to propose, just don't do it so quickly. I went down fast, and it really hurt my knee."
He proposed beneath a rock inside the museum—"which doesn't make any sense," he said—which meant his knee came crashing down on a concrete floor. He couldn't resist a corny joke, though, saying, "I was between a rock and a hard place!"
In any case, though, he powered through the pain. "I went down fast," he reiterated, "and I went down hard, and it hurt so much...You have to hide that because it's a really romantic moment."
He dramatically reenacted how he grunted, groaned and moaned through the proposal. "But I got through it, and she said yes, which was really exciting," he said, clarifying, "Well, she didn't say yes, she said, 'Well, OK.' But we're really, really excited."
He explained to Conan, though, that "as soon as you get engaged, the next thing is, everyone says, 'Well, when's the wedding date?' After that, everyone's dying to know when children are coming into the picture."
"And once you have kids," T.J. said, "they say, 'It's all downhill from here on out!'"