True love comes in many forms and looks like many different things to many people. You never quite know when true love will walk into your life, but goodness knows you’ll do everything in your power to keep hold of it. The celebration of love in all its forms comes to its peak on Valentine’s Day, and for me, there’s nothing I love more than looking to the celebrities who hold a special place in my heart to discover the origins of their lives with the people who hold a special place in their hearts.
Celebrity love stories are interesting because when you really take a deeper dive, darn near every celeb couple you know has had an interesting road to their resulting union. Whether they met while filming a movie, at an awards show, completely randomly or perhaps at a dinner party with friends, even the folks who move in rarefied circles are on their own unique trajectories to true love.
And so on that note, let’s take a peek at how a selection of celebrity couples who have been together for quite some time actually came together — because everyone loves a good “This is how we met” story, right?
Sarah Paulson & Holland Taylor
The American Horror Story star’s romance with Legally Blonde actor Holland Taylor might be a bit more fledgling than some of the other couples on the list, but believe you me, these two seem to have the real thing on their hands. According to PopSugar, the pair met a full decade before they started dating in 2015. When they met in 2005, Paulson was still dating actor Cherry Jones but even then, she recalls thinking Taylor was “the most exquisitely beautiful woman I’d ever seen.” Swoon!
In a 2016 interview with The New York Times, Paulson confirmed her romance with Taylor, stating that she was fully committed to loving who her heart wanted her to love, not someone that would appease either the heterosexual or LGBTQ communities. “If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that’s going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don’t want to feel that. What I can say absolutely is that I am in love, and that person happens to be Holland Taylor.”
Will Smith & Jada Pinkett Smith
OK, so Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith actually might be in the running for the cutest ever celebrity couple love story; I’ll let you decide.
According to Biography, Pinkett Smith met Smith when she auditioned to play his character’s girlfriend on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1995. While she ultimately didn’t get the role (she was apparently too short to play the part — go figure), the chemistry was very real IRL. The pair began dating around that time, and by New Year’s Eve 1997, they were married.
Jason Momoa & Lisa Bonet
Momoa is to this day still so deeply in love with his partner and newly minted wife, actor Lisa Bonet, you can practically hear him gushing when you read about how he met her. While speaking to James Corden in an interview on The Late Late Show With James Corden, Momoa recalled how he’s been in love with her since he was a kid and she was starring on The Cosby Show. “Ever since I was, like, 8 years old and I saw her on the TV, I was like, ‘Mommy, I want that one,'” he said. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to stalk you for the rest of my life and I’m going to get you.’ I’m a full-fledged stalker,” he joked. “I didn’t tell her that until we had two babies. Otherwise, I’d be creepy and weird. But yeah, [I’d] just always wanted to meet her. She was a queen, always.”
Fate seemed to agree with Momoa’s early belief he was destined to be with Bonet, because the two actors met in 2005 at a jazz club through mutual friends. And, OK, so maybe you shouldn’t stalk the person you think is your soul mate, but in this instance, it’s good to know Momoa’s romantic perseverance paid off.
Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard
These adorable parents, partners and actors are candid about the highs and lows of married life, but at the end of the day, they know how to have fun together. According to PopSugar, that fun began back in 2007 when they met at a mutual friend’s birthday dinner. Their story is a testament to the fact that opposites attract because Bell recalls their meeting was very normal and “not electric” and Shepard remembers being weirded out by Bell’s bubbly personality. Thank goodness fate stepped in, because when they ran into one another a few weeks later, the vibe was totally different, and they actually became interested in one another.
Ellen DeGeneres & Portia de Rossi
When DeGeneres and de Rossi met in 2004 at the VH1 Big in ’04 Awards, de Rossi recalls feeling totally awestruck. “Ellen took my breath away,” she told The Advocate. That had never happened to me in my life, where I saw somebody and experienced all of those things you hear about in songs and read about in poetry. My knees were weak.” The couple got engaged in 2008 and were married shortly thereafter once the same-sex marriage ban was eradicated in California.
Sterling K. Brown & Ryan Michelle Bathe
Of course our favorite actor on This Is Us, Sterling K. Brown, not only married his college sweetheart, actor Ryan Michelle Bathe, 10 years ago, but they have a ridiculously sweet meet-cute story to boot.
According to Entertainment Tonight, the two met while attending Stanford University, and even though they were cast in the same play, Brown couldn’t make his move right away because Bathe was dating someone else at the time. “She got cast in the play…and we would ride bikes to rehearsal, and we would just talk,” Brown told ET. “We found out that we were both from St. Louis. We didn’t know that we were both from St. Louis, like our parents went to rival high schools. We were born in the same hospital. Like, we were friends. She was dating somebody. Of course she was, she’s gorgeous. So we were just buddies. […] We were homies before everything else, and then it grew,” he concluded.
OK, that is just too precious.
Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban
Kidman and Urban met in 2005 and were married in 2006 (talk about knowing what you want!). And while it seems like these two are more in love with each other with every passing day, Kidman was kinda nervous at first because Urban didn’t call her back after they met — he waited four months. Yikes.
“I remember thinking I had such a crush on him and he wasn’t interested in me. He didn’t call me for four months,” Kidman told Ellen DeGeneres in a 2017 interview. Luckily, they’re together and they have two daughters, Sunday and Faith, but fellas, take a lesson from this and don’t wait four months to call back. Ever.
Catherine Zeta-Jones & Michael Douglas
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas have been married for nearly 18 years and have known each other for nearly 22. So how exactly did they meet?
In a 2001 interview with Larry King, Zeta-Jones recalled her first meeting with Douglas and their ensuing courtship. “We met in 1996 at the Deauville Film Festival…I think it was 1996!” she recalled. “I had been told Michael Douglas wanted to meet me. I was a little nervous because I didn’t quite know what he wanted to meet me about.” After initially walking by her when she thought she was about to meet him, Douglas made a more conscientious effort to get close to her, inviting her to sit with him during a banquet dinner after the premiere of her film, Zorro. “[He] asked very gentlemanly if he could sit next to me at a very long table at the dinner for the Zorro premiere,” she noted.
Douglas thought he’d blown his chances with her, though, because of one very terrible one-liner. “I met her in the bar and was a total gentleman,” he recalled, going on to say that his suggestion while they were enjoying a nightcap led to a hairy outcome. “I said to her after about half an hour, ‘You know, I’m going to be the father of your children.’ It sounded good, and she said, ‘You know, I’ve heard a lot about you and I’ve seen a lot about you, and I think it’s time I say goodnight.'” Thankfully, it was just goodnight and not goodbye!
Justin Timberlake & Jessica Biel
Timberlake and Biel have been together for a hot minute now (almost 11 years if we’re talking numbers) and they are such a solid unit you’d be forgiven for thinking they’ve been together most of their lives.
The couple crossed paths back in 2007 at the Golden Globes. Biel’s 7th Heaven costar, Beverly Mitchell, recalled to Today how taken Biel was with Timberlake from the minute she first saw him. “I was there like the moment the love connection happened […] It was so cute because they were like — it’s that moment like, ‘I like you, I think you like me,'” Mitchell noted.
In 2012, Timberlake also opened up to Us Weekly about how he pursued Biel, which he did carefully and considerately. “I did it the old-fashioned way — by telephone,” he said. “That’s something I learned from both my stepdad and my grandfather — that there is a thing called chivalry and it doesn’t have to die with the birth of the internet. The way I see it, if you’re asking a girl out on a date, it’s only right to do it in a way that she can hear your voice. I had to be pretty persistent in order to get her to say yes. But I have a fair amount of tenacity and if I want something I stick to it. And in the end she agreed.” Aw, you guys!
Kurt Russell & Goldie Hawn
Who says you need to be married to spend your life with your soul mate? Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell certainly don’t. The vivacious celeb couple has been together since 1983 (35 years!) and have shirked traditional relationship milestones like marriage in favor of doing their own thing.
According to PopSugar, “The two first met on the set of The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band in 1968, but nothing ever developed because of their major age difference (she was 21 and he was just 16). […] [T]heir paths crossed once more when they costarred in the 1984 romantic war drama, Swing Shift. At the time, Kurt had just finalized his divorce from Season Hubley and was already a father to son, Boston, while Goldie had two kids, Oliver and Kate, from her previous marriage to Bill Hudson. After playing love interests, it didn’t take long for their friendship to develop into something more.”
James Brolin & Barbra Streisand
After nearly 20 years of marriage, Streisand and Brolin might be one of the cutest older couples in Hollywood. The famous singer and the veteran actor met later in life at a dinner party. While recounting their initial meeting to Meredith Vieira back in 2014 on Vieira’s now-defunct talk show, Streisand described it as magical at first and she instantly charmed her future hubby, but she wanted to take things slow to make sure he was the one for her.
Vieira prompted Streisand about the meeting, saying, “You apparently said something about his hair. You didn’t like his hair, and he knew in that moment that you were the one. He fell in love with you in that moment,” to which Streisand replied, “Yeah, because I told him the truth. Most people don’t tell the truth. They are afraid of the truth, but I like the truth,” she said. “You don’t have to think about what you said before. It’s just the truth.”
Prince William & Kate Middleton
We’ve spent years obsessing over this beloved royal couple, and after six years of marriage, two (almost three) children and one Lifetime movie later, we still love revisiting their love story.
The pair may have met before 2001, when both were attending St. Andrews University. But varying circumstances led them to rekindling their friendship when they both arrived, and one night, William even invited his future wife to dinner at one of the dining halls. The pair maintained a friendship for a while and went through a period of on-again, off-again romancing until they finally got married in 2011.
Penélope Cruz & Javier Bardem
Adorable lovebirds Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem first met while filming the 1992 Spanish film Jamón, Jamón. The pair didn’t officially get together until more than a decade has passed when they were spotted together in the Maldives in 2005. While they didn’t confirm their relationship at first, they were spotted together more and more frequently until finally, Cruz was spotted with an engagement ring in 2009. The rest is history.
Kumail Nanjiani & Emily V. Gordon
Funnily enough, the story of how Kumail Nanjiani met his wife of nearly 11 years, screenwriter Emily V. Gordon, is now an Oscar-nominated film. The Big Sick is a dramatization of the comedy duo’s love story, telling how Gordon once heckled a then-upstart comedian (Nanjiani) and from that heckling sprung a deep and abiding love.
Ben Falcone & Melissa McCarthy
Comedy has always been the thing that’s connected actors Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone. The pair met in 1998 in a comedy writing class at the Groundlings in Los Angeles and were married in 2005. They have two children together and 13 years later, they’re still laughing and working together. Falcone has directed and acted with McCarthy in a number of films, including Bridesmaids, Tammy and their upcoming film, Life of the Party.
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