That's not completely true... You can buy ToV, download it, run it, log in with your account and it will be added to your Relic Account.
Or you can download it, after it finished go to library, right click over ToV and choose "show key option" or something like that, then you can use that to register manually on your Relic Account.
The only downfall is that after installing Steam-ToV and if you already had Retail CoH there could be problems and perhaps you will need to reinstall RetailCoH.
Mors Indecepta
Might controls everything, and without strength you cannot protect anything. Let alone yourself...