Jennifer Love Hewitt is quite the matchmaker — at least when it comes to her 9-1-1 character, Maddie Buckley.

“Back on my first day of 9-1-1, [co-creator Tim Minear] asked me what I wanted to have happen for Maddie, and I said that I wanted her to be with Chimney,” she tells EW of asking for her 9-1-1 dispatcher to pair with Kenneth Choi’s firefighter paramedic. “He was kind of like, ‘Wait, what?'”

But “I just felt like they were two people who were sort of meant to be together,” Hewitt explains. “I was just sort thinking about who Maddie was and where I hoped she was going to go, and I think she was deserving of a Chimney in her life. I think anybody who wants to be in love deserves a really good person like him. I don’t know, it was just a gut feeling. And I didn’t even know Kenny that well. It wasn’t even about personally like, ‘Oh, we have fun off camera.'”

That said, the two actors have certainly grown close over the years — with Choi spending a lot of time with Hewitt and her family on their off time. “They call him Uncle Kenny,” Hewitt says of her husband Brian Hallisay (who has worked with her as Kyle on The Client List and Maddie’s abusive ex, Doug, on 9-1-1) and their three kids. “He’s really a family member to us. I adore him.”

As for their on-screen interactions, “I’m glad that they’ve kind of found their way back together,” Hewitt says of Chimney and Maddie, who separated after the latter’s severe postpartum depression last season but are now giving their relationship another shot. “I do believe that the journey they’ve taken together has been ultimately worth it — and worth it for the audience because it’s been well-earned, their kind of happiness. They seem to be moving kind of step by step into their life together, which is really good.”

SPOILERS: The rest of the article contains spoilers from season 6 of 9-1-1