A few weeks after separating from Martín Benegas, Mia’s father, the influencer met the footballer and felt an instant connection. Although at first he preferred to keep his distance, they ran into each other again months later and since then they haven’t separated. In an interview with Priscila Crivocapich for Protagonistas of Para Ti, Carito explained how the relationship began, what attracted her to Santiago, and why she feels he is the man with whom she wants to share her life.
Carito Müller often says she has lived many lives in her 26 years. She married, became a mom, went through a separation and chose love again. Today, while she awaits Emma, her second daughter, she enjoys the family she is building with Santiago “Chino” Toloza, the footballer with whom she says she has found a different connection.
The story began shortly after her separation from Martín Benegas, Mia’s dad. Carito had decided to bet on her family and, although the marriage lasted only a few months, she remembers that relationship fondly. According to her account, there were no infidelities or violent episodes: over time, they simply started having differences in their values and plans.
“I adore the father of my daughter, he gave me my first child,” she said about Martín. She also highlighted that they managed to build a good dynamic as parents and that today they can accompany Mia’s growth together. “I take her to soccer, ‘hey, I’m going to watch her,’ ‘come on, join me.’ He takes her to swimming and I can go see her too,” she explained. She even noted that Santiago and Martín have a cordial relationship: “As soon as they met: ‘Bro, all good,’ they pass each other the backpack.”
The first meeting and a connection that lingered unfinished
In mid-May, just weeks after the separation, Carito met Santiago at a mutual friend’s birthday party. He arrived wearing a cap and, although they hadn’t exchanged many words yet, something caught her eye.
“When I see him come in, I think: ‘Who is this?’” she recalled. And she described that first impression with a very romantic image: “Did you ever see someone come in and, with their aura, with their presence? Something drew me.”
The attraction was immediate. Carito describes herself as a romantic woman and said that, even after everything she had lived through, she still believed in love. “I bet on love. Love saves my life”, she expressed during the chat with Priscila Crivocapich.
After that encounter they started dating, but Santiago chose to be honest with her. He was 22 and Carito 25; she was going through a divorce and already a mother of a girl. The footballer wasn’t sure he could sustain a relationship in those circumstances and preferred to tell her before getting further involved.
“He was honest with me, I thanked him a lot. I cried, I swear I cried because I thought: ‘We connected so well’”, she said. And she added a line that shows how much that first approach had meant: “Since my separation, the only person I truly connected with was Santiago.”
Although the bond paused, she didn’t forget him. After that period, she focused on sports, traveled to Malaysia with the streamer team, and trained for months to compete in Párense de Manos. After winning her fight, she headed to the coast with the plan to take time for herself and stay away from any romantic entanglements.
But the reunion arrived in an unexpected way.
The message that changed everything: “From then on we never separated”
Carito had returned earlier than planned from her vacation. After spending her birthday with Mia and a few friends, she decided to go back to Buenos Aires to finish celebrating with her family. A few days later, after dropping her daughter off at Martín’s house, she posted a photo on her Instagram close friends list.
Santiago was still among her contacts and responded to that story. Carito read the message a couple of hours later and couldn’t hide her thrill.
“When I picked up my phone two hours later and saw: ‘Chino Toloza has replied to your story.’ The world exploded,” she recounted with a laugh. “I swear I got a heat in my body. I started jumping around my house.”
The reply was as spontaneous as her excitement. “I’ve been celibate for two months. You talk to me, I love you with all my heart. Tell me where I’m going to see you,” he wrote back. A friend who was visiting her accompanied her to Santiago’s house.
The meeting took place on a Wednesday, January 28. “From there we never separated,” she asserted.
This time, however, Carito tried to protect herself. She didn’t want to get her hopes up again and approached the meeting with a certain caution. “I went with the handbrake on. The talk with my friend was: ‘No, girl, I’m coming for what I came for. We love Chino, but no, he’s not going to do this to me again’,” she recalled.
Santiago noticed she was more distant and took his time to close the gap. “He realized I was kind of wary. No kissing, no boyfriend, nothing; we were like amichis,” he said. But the resistance didn’t last long. “After two days I couldn’t. I swear I couldn’t; I love him. I have with him something I swear I never felt before in my life, a different kind of love. Like literally: ‘I love you from the moment I saw you’”.
What attracted her to Santiago and the bond she built with Mia
Just a week or two after reuniting, Santiago took her to Córdoba to meet his family in Morteros, the place where he was born and raised. For Carito, that trip was also important to discover how much they shared in their view of life.
“We are very alike, Santi,” she explained. She highlighted his humility, his family values, and the way he plans for the future. “He’s a small-town guy. He was born in Morteros, he was raised in Morteros,” she said. She also noted that she began to admire him for his discipline and commitment to work: she saw him getting up early to train and push forward with his own projects.
“He’s someone who came into my life with a lot of projects,” she summarized. And she recalled that from the beginning, Santiago talked about shared plans and a future together. “He told me: ‘Listen, we’re together, we’re going to project this, I have this apartment, I have this, we can do this, we can do that’.” For her, that attitude was one of the things that ultimately won her over: “You’re backing me up. Come on, two of us, let’s go to the ends of the world together.”
But there was another fundamental aspect of the relationship: the bond Santiago built with Mia. According to Carito, the girl liked him from the very first moment and, over time, they became very close. The influencer explained that her daughter calls him on video when he’s away, asks when she can visit him, and tells him that she loves him and misses him.
“Now it happens that she starts crying when Mia calls him on video. ‘Santi, where are you? Are you in Chile? And when will I go to Chile? I love you very much, Santi, and I miss you’,” she said. “And it makes him cry. She tells me: ‘You don’t know how much I miss him.’”
She also highlighted how involved he became in Mia’s daily upbringing. Santiago would accompany her, prepare the bottle at night, and help her fall asleep in his arms. For Carito, that experience was important for both of them: she feels Mia brought him closer to fatherhood and that he learned by watching her mothering.
“He tells me: ‘Gorda, what I learned from you as well. I see you as Mia’s mom and how you handle things’”, she recalled.
The wish to have a family and the arrival of Emma
The possibility of having a child together came up very early in the couple’s conversations. A month after they started dating, Santiago told her that he wanted her to be the mother of his children. Carito, who had already experienced motherhood and a separation, tried to make him understand the scope of that decision.
“I told him: ‘Santi, you don’t know what you’re saying. You have no idea. It’s all very nice, having children, but I already know what it’s like after a separation and all the mess’”, she recalled.
Nevertheless, the desire to build a family together remained. They talked for a while, had a serious conversation and finally decided to stop taking precautions. Carito said that Santiago even asked her to stop taking birth control pills and that, after several weeks of discussions and doubts, she agreed.
“Okay, listen to me, I’ll stop them. Let it arrive when it has to arrive,” she remembered him saying. The pregnancy arrived very quickly: “I got pregnant in a week.”
Today they are waiting for Emma, who is due on December 10, and Carito enjoys watching how the family is getting ready to welcome her. She is also convinced that Santiago is the person with whom she wants to share her future.
“With Santi something happens to me, I’ve become a bit of a Marielita, and with him I really see myself in my whole life,” she confessed. And she explained what she finds in the bond: the possibility to talk, resolve differences, and navigate together the obstacles that may arise.
“Even if you have your point and I have mine, it’s not a war, not a fight. It’s: we try to jump over this together, done, we leap over it, that’s it, we’ve learned this,” she described.
At 26, Carito feels she has found a form of love that makes her look forward. After a personal story marked by very difficult moments, today she chooses to stay with what she has built and with the family around her.
“I bet on love. Love saved my life and I will always bet on love,” she had said during the interview. And, when talking about her present, she summarized it with another phrase that runs through her entire story: “I live for love, and by love.”
