Ted Danson knows he met wife Mary Steenburgen at the perfect time.

The actor, who stars in Netflix’s new series A Man on the Inside, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue that he’s confident the pair wouldn’t have worked out had they met earlier in life.

“Guarantee you the answer is no. I’ll just speak for myself,” Danson, 76, explains. “I was not really fully emotionally baked until shortly before I met Mary.”

As fate would have it, the two met in 1983 while attending the same audition. Just a year before, Danson tells PEOPLE he had committed himself to being a better man — a decision he believes helped seal the deal with the Elf actress, 71.

“I had, about a year before, decided I want to become a more emotionally mature, honest human being,” he recalls of that period in his 40s. “I worked very hard at it or I don’t think Mary Steenburgen would’ve even seen me. So yeah. The answer is no. Thank God we didn’t meet earlier.”

Prior to Steenburgen, Danson had been married twice. The Cheers actor first wed actress Randy Gosch in 1970, but they split in 1975. He then went on to marry producer Casey Coates in 1977 and they welcomed two daughters — Kate Danson, 44, and Alexis Danson, 39 — before they divorced in 1993.

After meeting at the audition, Steenburgen and Danson’s friendship deepened while working together on the 1994 drama Pontiac Moon. The two eventually went on to tie the knot in October 1995 and have worked together on several projects since, including the 1996 limited series Gulliver’s Travels and the 2004 TV movie It Must Be Love.

The couple also share four kids between them. (In addition to Danson’s two daughters, Steenburgen is mom to Lilly Walton, 43, and Charlie McDowell, 41, with ex-husband Malcolm McDowell.)

Despite having two famous parents whose credits span across the film and television world — Steenburgen is best known for her roles in Elf, Step Brothers, Book Club and The Proposal, while Danson made his mark in Cheers, A Good Place, Three Men and a Baby and Damages — Danson jokes their kids couldn’t be less impressed.

“From the outside, it looks that way,” he tells PEOPLE of their kids and grandchildren finding them cool. “From their point of view, it’s like, ‘Would you stop calling me and asking if we can [do this]…'”

He then quips: “Well, it depends on who we’re working with, or it used to. If Mary’s working with Johnny Depp, yeah, she was cool.”

Despite their kids’ nonchalant attitudes about their careers, Danson says he and Steenburgen constantly cheer each other on — and are always by each other’s sides through the ups and downs.

“Whenever I become self-deprecating, full of doubt, which I do on a regular basis, she lovingly goes, ‘Snap out of it,’ and kind of forces me out the door into turning the next corner in life,” he says.

For Danson, that new corner is starring in Netflix’s A Man on the Inside. In the new series, which was based on Maite Alberdi’s 2020 documentary The Mole Agent, Danson plays Charles, a retired professor who loses his wife and discovers a new hobby as a private investigator’s assistant, infiltrating a senior living facility to help solve a case.

“We get to explore aging, all those things that, in this country, sometimes we’re afraid to talk about, memory loss, everything, we broach with a tenderness and a seriousness still contained in a kind of light-hearted, joyful way,” he says. “I’m so happy because I’m 76 and I get to be part of this conversation, which is becoming more and more of my conversation in life.”

The actor notes that he’s also enjoyed the project because of how he’s been able to “recognize myself” in Charles and learn from his mistakes.

“My eldest daughter once said, ‘Your love is kind of hit-and-run. I know you love me, but you kind of come in and love on me and then, got to go.’ I guess it was coming from the fear of relaxing more and more into a moment and not trying to control it,” he explains. “How we love people and express our love sometimes gets shaded by our own insecurities or [desire] to control.”

“I’ve had to grow with that, with my kids and with Mary. I’m constantly being challenged to be more real, more present,” Danson admits, before noting how he and Charles both try to protect their loved ones from experiencing hardships — sometimes to a fault.

“I’ve done this with Mary. She often says, ‘No, you need to tell me everything and let me choose how to react to it.’ Because Charles decides to protect his daughter from this sadness and pain that he’s going through, which cuts her out completely from being able to be part of his life. It’s really beautiful storytelling,” he adds. “I’m so happy to be part of this.”