Originally appeared in Elle February, 2010

BY: Amy Wallace

What, you were expecting peace and quiet,muchachas? Cesar Millan may be known as the Dog Whisperer, but in his kitchen on a recent afternoon, there is not a moment of silence. When Millan and his wife, Ilusion, aren’t taking turns bobbling a friend’s baby on their knees or admiring their youngest son’s new braces, they are talking excitedly. Often at the same time.

It’s a Latino thing, Cesar explains: “Everything is so loud.” Ilusion agrees: “I’m naturally a loud person. It can be a bit overpowering. I’m just sharing my feelings, you know?” Her husband, looking trim in a V-neck sage-colored T-shirt and faded jeans, continues, “I feel like I’m regulating the volume of my wife’s intensity. Like—”

“That’s so true,” interjects Ilusion, vibrant in a hot pink sleeveless turtleneck and pants ironed to a sharp crease. “He’s like, ‘Honey, okay, we understand. But there are neighbors!’ ”

Yes, that’s right: When the Dog Whisperer talks to the woman he says domesticated him—call her the Man Whisperer— he’s lucky to get a word in edgewise. “When we’re in a restaurant,” the D.W. says, “and she gets into that, you know, stage, I have to say, ‘I’m right here. Look! I can totally hear you.’ ”

The M.W. nods, smiling. “We’re both very animated,” she says.

“Let me tell the story,” the D.W. says in the same calm, assertive tone that he uses with the unruly dogs on his weekly hit TV show (now in its sixth season on the National Geographic Channel). And at first, the correction seems to take.

“I’m sorry, baby,” the M.W. responds, her voice warm like she means it. A beat later, though, that’s out the window. The M.W. has something she just has to say.

So it goes, for more than two hours: Cesar, 40, and Ilusion, 34, jabbing and parrying, cross-talking, even bickering. What other couples might see as exhausting, however, the Millans, perched side by side on tall stools, treat as a blessing—because there was a time they had trouble communicating at all. Today, more than 10 million viewers a week hear the D.W. repeat, mantralike, that he rehabilitates dogs and trains people. What few know is that before he became the Dog Whisperer, his wife rehabilitated him.

“She gave leadership to the relationship,” the D.W. says, recalling the dark day 15 years ago when Ilusion—fed up with her husband’s harsh indifference—moved out with their infant son.

“He was having a hard time loving me, because of his past, because he just wasn’t a people person,” Ilusion says, leaning forward so her knees almost touch her husband’s. “He was afraid to love anybody.”

“I didn’t do it with humans, that’s all,” Cesar says, matter-of-factly. “I was there in my heart, but my heart was blocked.”

When Cesar was growing up on a farm in Culiacán, Mexico, his affinity for canines earned him the nickname El Perrero, or “the dog man.” It also got him teased. He was that weird kid who related better to animals than to his own species. Plus, he was dirt-poor. So from early on, he believed that people could hurt you, but dogs—never! Determined to become the world’s best dog trainer, Cesar crossed the border illegally at age 21. Arriving in Los Angeles, he washed limousines while trying to build a clientele.

From the moment a 17-year-old Ilusion saw Cesar in a crowded ice rink, she says, “I knew this was the guy for me.” Cesar, then 23 and living in a one-room apartment with six dogs, wasn’t so sure. When a friend told him he could go to jail (and surely be deported) for dating an underage girl, he broke off their fledgling romance. He was blunt, Ilusion says. “I came to the door and pressed the bell, and he said, ‘I can’t see you anymore.’ It killed me.”

But it didn’t deter her. There was something about Cesar’s focus, his drive, that made her feel safe. The day she turned 18, she showed up at his door again, and soon they were inseparable. When, a few months later, she discovered she was pregnant, Cesar immediately proposed. Before their wedding, which he paid for, he washed the limousine they’d ride in himself.