Sal Vulcano Was 'Very Conflicted' About Revealing Wife and Daughter but Now Feels a 'Burden' Was 'Lifted' (Exclusive)

The 'Impractical Jokers' comedian revealed he had gotten married and welcomed a daughter, now 20 months, in an unexpected life update

Sal Vulcano shocked Impractical Jokers fans when he revealed that he had privately married his wife and welcomed a baby girl. Now that the news is finally out, he's breathing a sigh of relief.

In an exclusive conversation with PEOPLE, Vulcano, 47, reveals that he "didn't really choose" to go public with his major life update, but rather engaged in a conversation with his close friend, Theo Von, on his podcast This Past Weekend where the news came up "organically."

"It's something that is constantly on my mind because I live with it all the time," he says of his wife and daughter, 20 months. "I'm always making specific choices to keep that private. I'm not a very public person. I've always been a very private person, and so it never occurred to me to speak about intimate things in that sense on a public level."

Related: Impractical Jokers Star Sal Vulcano Reveals He's Married, Has a Baby Daughter: 'Feelings I've Never Felt'

Although he likes to keep his personal life away from the limelight, Vulcano dropped an hour-long standup special — his very first — titled Terrified on May 31 and he's already looking towards his next routine.

"[Terrified] is out now and I started to write the new hour and I want to be able to discuss my life," he explains. "I was about to start maybe speaking about it, trickling here and there on stage anyway and if it was going to come out that way... When the conversation happened, I just decided, well, this might be the best way to do it — in a genuine conversation with someone I known for a while and speak on it exactly how I want to speak on it."

Vulcano was able to disperse the information on his own terms, but that doesn't mean he didn't have his doubts about going public. The comedian tells PEOPLE that he was "actually very conflicted with it." In fact, he had plans to let Von know "if I wanted to keep it in" after the podcast was finished.

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"I went home and I spoke to my wife and I thought about it and it's like ripping off a band-aid, basically," he continues, admitting that he didn't think the information would be news. "It's been so long that I've kind of kept this stuff to myself. It is meaningful to me and so it was a hard choice, but I was like, it's got to happen eventually."

Now, Vulcano lives in "a world where that's out in the open" as he admits it feels good to "finally" talk about his wife and his daughter after keeping things private for so long.

"It feels like that kind of burden has been lifted a bit," he laughs.

Related: 'Impractical Jokers' Stars Say 'It Was Tough' Filming First Season Without Joe Gatto: 'He's Our Boy'

With his debut special out, the Impractical Jokers star is headed on tour and he hopes that his family will be visited him on the road.

"I hate leaving them, so I really do hope they join if and whenever they can," he explains. "It's a little bit hard being on the road, because sometimes we're in a different city every single night, and so it is hard to have any quality time."

As far as Terrified goes, Vulcano says this: "It's just a lot of me and it's personal, it's very much my own voice, and it's something I've been working on meticulously for a long time."

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Terrified is available to watch in full on YouTube.

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