It’s been a year of new beginnings for Daniela Ruah, who plays Kensi Blye on NCIS: Los Angeles, returning for its sixth season September 29. She became a new mom last December, and married actor and stuntman David Olsen in June, in an interfaith ceremony.
“We got married in Portugal,” says Ruah, who is of Portuguese-Jewish ancestry on her father’s side and of Portuguese, Russian and Ukranian Jewish heritage on her mother’s. “Our fathers married us. Dave’s father was ordained, and my father isn’t a rabbi but you just have to have a minyan, ten men, to make it valid. We got married under a chuppah and Dave broke the glass. We had the wine ceremony and drank out of the Kiddush cup. Dave’s father recited a beautiful homily.”
Her husband is the brother of her co-star (and love interest) Eric Christian Olsen, who played matchmaker a few years ago: “Eric kept inviting me to friends’ houses that he knew Dave would be at,” Ruah explains. “Then he stepped back and let whatever develop between us, and the rest is history!” The couple didn’t take a honeymoon: “We’re going to wait till our baby is a little older. There was the proposal, pregnancy, and birth and wedding all in one happy year-and-a-half and we want to spread that out now,” says Ruah.