Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani,are now on their way to the altar, but they wouldn’t be if they had listened to Carson Daly. Daly, who serves as host of The Voice, sat Shelton and Stefani down early in their relationship and suggested they put an end to their budding romance — something he now admits was said in error.

“Five years ago, when you started to date Blake, you’ll remember this, we went back to your house, your old house in LA, and I sat you and Blake down in the kitchen,” Daly recalled to Stefani on the Today Show.

“And I said, ‘You guys, pump the brakes. This is not good. This is not going to work,'” he continued. “And I looked at Gwen, and I said, ‘You’re much, much too good for this guy. You’re smart. You’re intelligent. You’re one of my oldest friends. And then there’s Blake,’”

Now that the couple is engaged, and Daly realizes that they are indeed a perfect match, Stefani is happy to gush about her future husband.

“What don’t I love about Blake, and what don’t we all love about Blake?” Stefani boasted. “He’s just such a good guy. He’s one of the most generous human beings and down-to-earth. It almost sounds generic, but it’s just so true. He’s so gifted and so unique and talented and he really just is my best friend, and I feel just so excited that I have someone in my life that now I have a chance at happiness for a long time to come.

“It’s just a blessing, the whole thing, and it is a miracle,” she added. “And yes, Carson, you witnessed that. It’s weird how things happen, and you just don’t see things that are right around the corner after such devastation.”

Shelton waited more than five years before popping the question, and although Stefani previously admitted she was getting anxious, she acknowledges that the timing might have been perfect in the end.

“I think there was a lot to consider when you have so many people involved. Children, and their hearts, and everybody in my family [and] his family, We all went through a lot together,” reflected the No Doubt singer. “So I think in a romantic way, when you fall in love so hard and so unexpectedly — and so late in your life — you think ‘I want to marry you!’ That’s the first romantic reaction, like, ‘Let’s get married.’ So we always talked about it, of course, and I think that as the years were going by, it didn’t need to happen. There was a lot of healing to do.”