When a man writes and sings love songs with the smooth intensity of Brian McKnight — he sings love-so-strong songs and love-gone-so-wrong songs with equal conviction and intensity — you’d think he’d been involved in passionate love affairs from a very young age.

Not so, the soft-spoken hit-maker said: It wasn’t until very recently that he discovered what true love is. Before that he’d never really been in love.

“I hadn’t, even though I thought that I had,” McKnight explained, speaking via phone from his home in Los Angeles last week. “It’s not until you actually find the real thing that you realize that everything else was just ‘waiting till now.’”

McKnight met his true love — she’s a former Hawaiian Tropics model known professionally as Leilani Malia, half-Hawaiian, half-Filipina, born and raised on Maui — at a fitness convention.

“She walked in the convention center and,” he pauses a beat, “I’d like to say that’s it, but it was only the beginning.

“The possibility of actually finding someone that you know is the perfect person for you, and having them actually like you, too, is the hard part. It took me 42 years and I was still lucky. If I had been five minutes later that day, it wouldn’t have happened.”

McKnight shares his feelings about his newfound love with the title song of his upcoming album, “Better.” In it he proclaims, “I’ve never been in love before, because I’ve been waiting all my life for you,” and thanks her for inspiring him to become a better man.

“Better” is McKnight’s 16th album in a string going back to his debut album, “Brian McKnight,” in 1992. The official release date is Feb. 26. The title song is already available as a download single, and the album is available for preorder online.

McKnight will almost certainly include a few songs from the new album amid his extensive list of golden chart hits when he performs Saturday. En Vogue — the current three-voice roster of Cindy Herron-Braggs, Terry Ellis and Rhona Bennett — is opening the show.

It’s a working weekend for him. He‘ll be back in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day for a special promotional appearance.

“There is a huge mall here in West L.A., and I’m doing — it’s not really a flash mob, it’s a thing on Valentine’s Day that’s free for everyone who comes in,” he explained. In exchange, the mall is playing McKnight’s new album for the entire month.

The business of promoting and selling music has changed since McKnight broke onto the pop charts in the early 1990s. He said he avoids being “pigeonholed” by not doing too many songs of any one type.

“You don’t think of it at the time when you’re producing these songs,” he said. “You just think it’s the best song. Unfortunately, then people have a perception of you that you’re only ‘this,’ which is hard to overcome.”

McKnight has avoided that problem with a string of hits that include both songs about heartbreak (“One More Cry” and “6-8-12,” to name two) and songs that describe the quest for perfection in a relationship (“Back at One”).

The chorus for the 1999 hit “Back at One” gives a step-by-step guide to falling in love: “One: You’re like a dream come true. Two: Just want to be with you. Three: Girl, it’s plain to see that you’re the only one for me.”

McKnight says the inspiration for the song came unexpectedly.

“I wish there was some great love story to tell you, but there wasn’t,” he said with a chuckle. “If you listen to the chorus, it sounds like the troubleshooting page of a manual. I was reading a manual for a DVD player when the idea struck me, and that’s the best thing that I can tell you about that song.”

In addition to business sense and inspiration, he said, love — as in love for what you do — is the essential element for success in the music business.

“If you’re doing this for any other reason than just for the love of music itself, I’d say don’t do it,” McKnight said. “This career is very up and down, and you’re going to have more disappointments than you’ll have success. The love of it has to be the central driving force.”