It was love at first bite.
Steven Krueger and Candice King first met in 2013 while filming “The Vampire Diaries” spinoff “The Originals,” and now they are engaged.
Krueger, 35, is tying the knot with King, 38, and as a result, he is gaining two step-daughters, since the “Kingshighway” actress is the mother of daughters Florence, 9, and Josephine, 4, from her previous marriage to Joe King.
“It’s incredible. They are the most delightful children,” Krueger shared exclusively with The Post during a fundraiser organized by the Television Academy Foundation for the Widows, Orphans & Disabled Firefighter’s Fund last Sunday. (The actress parted ways with the Fray guitarist in an April 2022 divorce after almost seven years of being wed.)
“Having two nieces has given me experience with young girls, but they are genuinely the most wonderful individuals, and we have developed such a strong bond. It’s heartwarming that I get the opportunity to be a part of their lives as well.”
After going Instagram official in 2023, the “Yellowjackets” star and the “Supernatural” alum have been inseparable, so popping the question was inevitable.
“I think it’s been a long time coming,” Krueger admitted. “We’ve been together for a couple of years now, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. She has kids, so we wanted to make sure they were ready as well.”
The day of the proposal came as a shock to Candice, though.
“I think she knew at some point,” he continued, “but it was definitely a surprise on the day when it happened.”
Right now, the pair are sinking their teeth into engaged life.
“We are starting to have conversations,” said Krueger about wedding planning. “I think, for the moment, we are enjoying the engagement; we’re not going to rush it. We want to see how work stuff goes over the next year. But we are starting to toss around some ideas about where we want to do it [and] exactly what we want to do. There’s a lot of possibilities.”
The actor shared that “right now, we are really debating if we want a big, traditional, fancy wedding or if we do a smaller thing with family and friends somewhere exotic.”
“I think once we settle on one of those, then we’ll have some things to bite into.”
Candice starred as Caroline Forbes in the CW drama and later the spinoff, while Krueger came into the universe as Josh Rosza. The supernatural world also included Nina Dobrev, Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley, Zach Roerig, Kat Graham, Michael Trevino, Joseph Morgan and Daniel Gillies.
The TV family will always be bound by blood, so much so that the cast will score invites to the upcoming nuptials.
“I would assume most of them,” Krueger confirmed. “We are going to our friend Michael Trevino’s wedding, who is also on ‘Vampire Diaries,’ in a few weeks. So there will be a lot of the cast there, and we’ll have most of the people at ours.”
“We have a bunch of group chats,” noted Krueger. “Little ones going and then these fan conventions all the time. It’s so fun because a few times a year, we all get together and reminisce about old times and just catch up with each other, and we don’t see each other all that much outside of it.”
While all the players in “The Vampire Diaries” universe have branched out to separate projects, the actor would love to get back on the screen with his real-life fiancée.
“I think that’s in the cards,” he teased. “I think if we could star in some sort of rom-com together, that would be amazing. That’s where we’re heading.”
“I was this close to being a lawyer and almost went to law school,” he explained, “and took a sharp left turn and ended up doing this instead. So I’ve always said at some point, it will come full circle, and I will get to play a lawyer on TV. So I think that’s in the future. You can never have too many [legal dramas].”
He might have more free time to take on a prestigious lawyer now that his character, Coach Ben Scott, died in Season 3 of the Showtime thriller “Yellowjackets.”
Despite playing the soccer team’s mentor, Krueger understood why Coach Scott had to go.
“[The showrunners] said, ‘Hey, this season is going to be the end for Coach Ben,’ which I kind of had an inkling,” he recalled to The Post earlier this month. “We had discussed it kind of informally at the very beginning of the show. So, I kind of knew Season 3 was about the time range.”
Krueger’s co-stars shared that his death was the hardest for them to come to terms with — a sentiment the star appreciated along with being told his impending death was coming.
“I’ve never been given like the courtesy of being told well, in advance, you know,” expressed Krueger. “This was, like, four months before we ever started filming. So truly everything was done in such a kind way, and it allowed me to kind of also prepare for exactly what I needed to do for kind of the overall arc of the season.”
