The coupling between the baryonic physics of galaxies and dark matter halo assembly is essential to our understanding of galaxy formation in the standard cosmological model. Yet, it remains elusive to observations given current challenges for measuring halo properties, with studies exploring the galaxy-halo connection typically relying on indirect estimations. In this talk, I will report direct observational evidence indicating that global baryonic properties of nearby galaxies -such as age, metallicity, star formation rate, morphology, stellar angular momentum- are modulated by the mass of their host halos. Thanks to detailed dynamical modeling of high-quality optical integral-field spectroscopic data from the CALIFA survey, we find that all these different galaxy properties depend on total enclosed mass measured up to three effective radii. Notably, galaxies become older, more metal-rich and less rotationally supported, have lower star formation rates and earlier-type morphologies as their total mass decreases (at fixed stellar mass). Furthermore, galaxies with different total masses not only exhibit different global baryonic properties, but also show distinct age and metallicity gradients and radial profiles. We interpret our results as being driven by halo assembly time, with galaxies/halos at different evolutionary stages modulating the variety of galaxy properties observed at fixed stellar mass. All in all, our findings suggest that dark matter halos play a key role in shaping the star formation, chemical enrichment, and assembly histories of galaxies, affecting both their spatially-integrated and -resolved properties observed at present day.