At every Glee press event, from before the show first aired until it became an award-winning success, Monteith was kind and respectful, carefully listening to questions, giving thoughtful and playful answers, and never taking himself too seriously.

If you asked your 18 millionth question about Finn and Rachel, he would smile and do his absolute best to give you something the fans would appreciate hearing.

If you wanted to snap a selfie with him, he wouldn't just oblige, he would tell you some fun little tricks on how to make you look the best ("Who cares about me?") and keep snapping photos until he thought the pic did you justice.

Selfless. Unaffected. And so real.

And I will never forget that during my first visit to the Glee set in season one, as we watched a performance scene in which Cory was sweating buckets and giving every ounce of everything he had, one of the producers turned to me and said, "No one works harder than Cory. No one. He is everything this show is about."