T-ara's Hyomin on Why She Married a Man 10 Years Her Senior: 'Didn't Want to Give Him Away'

T-ara's Hyomin appeared as a guest on actress Ko So-young's YouTube channel on the 15th, where she walked through the full arc of her relationship with her husband, from a chance birthday party encounter to the moment she quietly decided she was ready to get married.

It is one of the more candid accounts she has given of a relationship she has kept largely out of the public eye since their wedding in April of last year.

A voice before a face

The meeting happened at a mutual acquaintance's birthday gathering. Her husband arrived late, and what registered first wasn't his appearance. "He said, 'I'm so sorry I'm late,' and I liked his voice," Hyomin recalled. "I only caught a glimpse of him, but I had this feeling."

Ko So-young, who was filming alongside her, suggested that he must have been worth a second look. Hyomin deflected slightly: "Not quite to that level," she said, laughing.

As they talked through the evening, she assumed the age gap was modest, four or five years at most. It turned out to be ten. Ko So-young's response was to marvel at how well he had taken care of himself.

From no plans to a decision

Hyomin was direct about where she had stood on marriage before the relationship. "I wasn't really thinking about it," she said. Around six months into dating, the subject started coming up naturally in conversation. She remembered calling a friend and admitting she could feel things moving in that direction, uncertain how she felt about it.

What settled it for her was less romantic calculation than honest reluctance to let go. "I didn't want to give him to someone else," she said. "So I thought, alright, I'll get married."

The line landed with a laugh from Ko So-young, though it captures something real about how people often arrive at major decisions: not through abstract conviction but through the specific feeling that a particular person is not someone you want to walk away from.

Hyomin married in April of last year, roughly a year and a half before this conversation. Her husband is a finance professional who studied industrial engineering at Seoul National University and currently serves as a managing director at the Korean office of a global private equity firm. She noted on camera that she has now been living as a "newlywed in Hannam-dong", the upscale Seoul neighborhood where the two have settled.