In the era of “conscious uncoupling” and 72-day Hollywood marriages, it’s easy to give up on the idea of long-lasting love. However, for every celebrity breakup that’s splashed across the homepage of TMZ, there are couples like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell who are happily staying put.
While long-term commitment doesn’t sell tabloid magazines the way that scandals and divorces do, it does give us hope for the state of modern love that all 30 of these celebrity couples below have figured out how to make their relationships work in the long run.
Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge
After meeting at the University of St. Andrews where they were both students, Prince William and Kate Middleton started dating in 2003 and dated through graduation (when the photo below was snapped). Their relationship wasn’t always smooth sailing, however. They briefly split up in 2007 before reconciling later that year.
When a famous British soccer player and a pop star get together, people take notice. David and Victoria Beckham met in 2007 at a charity event and what followed was a whirlwind relationship. The couple became engaged in 1998 and were married the following year on the 4th of July in a lavish ceremony inside a castle.
They were dubbed “Posh and Becks” by the press — a nod to her Spice Girl and his soccer nicknames. The power couple now have four children: Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper.
Although Jada Pinkett Smith didn’t land the acting job she auditioned for to play Will Smith’s girlfriend on his TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” she did snag the role of his real-life wife! After meeting at the audition, the couple started dating and married on New Year’s Eve 1997.
Tom Hanks revealed that there were immediate sparks when he first met wife Rita Wilson on the set of the 1985 flick “Volunteers.” “Rita and I just looked at each other and—kaboing—that was that,” he said in an interview. “I asked Rita if it was the real thing for her, and it just couldn’t be denied.”
The couple married in 1988 and have now been together for over 30 years. They also have two sons together, Chester and Truman, in addition to Hanks’ two kids, actor Colin Hanks and Elizabeth, from his previous marriage.
Even though they’ve been together for 35 years, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have never married. And that choice is just fine with them!
“A lasting relationship isn’t about marriage. It’s about compatibility and communication. And you both need to want it to work,” Hawn has said.
The couple first met on a movie set in 1968 but didn’t get together until they worked on the 1983 film “Swing Shift.” They have one child together, son Wyatt, and three children (Kate Hudson, Oliver Hudson and Boston Russell) collectively from previous marriages.
John Travolta and Kelly Preston met on a screen test in 1987 for the film “The Experts” when she was married to someone else. They got together after her divorce, married in 1991 and went on to have three kids, Jett (who, sadly, passed away in 2009), Ella Bleu and Benjamin.
“A relationship doesn’t just happen. You have to work at it. You’ve got to keep it fun and that’s what we do,” said Preston.
When asked the secret to their 20-year marriage, Faith Hill said, “We do actually like one another.” Her husband Tim McGraw added, “Well, the car I drive, the relationship she drives … It’s pretty even. We make decisions about things in different ways, but we always talk about it before we do it. And you know, having three daughters, we sort of acquiesced to mom quite a bit on those decisions.”
The country singers met at a music industry event in 1994, went on tour together in 1996 and were married later that year.
As “All My Children” co-stars, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos shared many steamy moments together onscreen before they became a couple in real life. The two eloped to Las Vegas in 1996 and went on to have three children together.
On their 22nd wedding anniversary in 2018, Kelly Ripa posted a pic of the couple and wrote: “‘Feliz Aniversario lover! 22 years. You’re a human roller coaster that luckily I’m tall enough to ride.” They have three children together: Michael, Lola and Joaquin.
With three decades of marriage behind them, Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan seem to know a thing or two about staying married. The couple met on the set of the sitcom “Family Ties” and wed in 1988. They have gone through their share of ups and downs, including Fox’s Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in 1991 at the age of 29 and raising four children together.
Still, despite their challenges, Pollan says her husband still makes her laugh, and Fox seems equally enamored.
“[I] won the lottery in the wife department,” Fox has said.
When you meet the right person, it seems that nothing can stand in the way. That seems to be the case for Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld.
“I met Jerry at the end of what was the most difficult period of my life. I had just made a painful decision to dissolve a five-year relationship that began when I was 21 and culminated in a brief marriage. … Jerry was neither the cause nor the effect of the breakup, but his friendship gave me strength and resilience at a time of desperate need, and it has formed the basis for my happiness in the years that have followed,” Jessica Seinfeld has said of the couple’s relationship.
The two married on Dec. 25, 1999, and have three children: Sascha, Julian and Shepherd.
With almost 30 years of marriage under their belts, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have one of the longest-lasting marriages in Hollywood. And it seems like their relationship is still going strong; the couple regularly post sweet messages and photos of each other on their social media accounts.
The actors first met when she was 12 and he was 19 and she saw him in a play. Years later, they worked together on the set of the 1988 TV movie “Lemon Sky” and married later that year. They have two children together, Travis and Sosie.
The set of the 1997 teen horror film “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is where young actors Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar first met. The couple started dating in 2000 and tied the knot two years later in 2002.
Over the years, the couple has worked together on several more films, including “Scooby-Doo” and “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.” They have two children, Charlotte and Rocky, and launched Foodstirs, an organic baking company in 2014.
As a couple, music superstars Jay Z and Beyonce have had their ups and downs, including cheating and family drama. Despite their marriage woes, Jay Z calls his wife his “soulmate.”
The couple met when she was a teenager and first got together after collaborating on a song together for Jay Z’s 2002 album. They quietly married on April 4, 2008, in New York City. With 10 years of marriage under their belts, the couple are also the parents of three kids: Blue Ivy and twins Sir and Rumi.
Although her character on “Sex and the City” was notoriously single for much of the TV show’s run, Sarah Jessica Parker was not. The actress has been married to husband Matthew Broderick since 1997. (She famously wore a black dress to the couple’s wedding.) The couple met through a mutual connection — SJP’s brother, who worked with Broderick at a New York theater company. Now married for over 20 years, they have three children together: James, and twins Tabitha and Marion.
Amy Adams was in no rush to get married to partner Darren Le Gallo. After meeting at an acting class in 2001, the couple dated for 14 years before finally tying the knot in 2015. Despite her celebrity, the couple rarely shows up on celebrity gossip sites. “My husband and I are very quiet people,” she said once in an interview.
A 25-year age difference has not gotten in the way of happiness for Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. After meeting at a film festival, the couple fell in love and The married in a lavish ceremony in 2000. The couple have two children together, Dylan and Carys. (Douglas also has a son, Cameron, from a previous marriage.)
In 2004, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi met at a photoshoot and hit it off. For de Rossi, it was love at first sight. “I just walked over to say hello to her, and I couldn’t believe it, but she turned around and it was like an arrow was shot through my heart,” said de Rossi in an interview.
After the Supreme Court overturned the same-sex marriage ban in 2008, the women were married in an intimate ceremony.
Both William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman refer to their 20-year marriage as lucky breaks. “I’m the luckiest guy, I won the lottery. I love being married to Felicity. I love being married, I really like it. Although I have screwed it up before. I just got lucky. There’s no secret, I got lucky,” Macy has said.
The couple reportedly met in the early 1980s at a theatre company in New York. They have two daughters.
A music video shoot in 2007 first brought singer John Legend together with model Chrissy Teigen. However, the couple didn’t officially get together until months later.
“I played it cool for a long time. Never once did I ask, ‘What are we?’ Marriage was never my goal, because I’ve never been very traditional. I was just happy to be with him,” said Teigen. The couple married in 2013 and now have two children, Luna and Miles.
It’s not many people who meet their future spouse at the age of 14, but that is the case for Mila Kunis. She was a young teen when she was cast alongside Ashton Kutcher on the TV show “That ’70s Show” in 1998 and he was her first kiss. The couple were just friends up until 2012, when their relationship took a romantic turn. They married in 2015 and have two children together, Wyatt and Dimitri.
When Paul Bettany met Jennifer Connelly during a read-through for the 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind,” there was instant mutual interest. He later wooed her with his guitar-playing, although he has admitted that he was intimidated by her at first.
“I’ve never been this close to someone that beautiful before,” he recalled of meeting his now-wife. “I remember thinking, ‘I bet every man you ever met has tried to flirt with you.'”
The couple started dating after the film wrapped and married in 2003. They now have two children together, Stellan and Agnes. Connelly also has a son, Kai, from a previous marriage.
Sacha Baron Cohen is known for the zany characters he has created, including Borat and Bruno. But despite his wacky professional persona, he seems to have had a drama-free partnership to fellow actor Isla Fisher for over 16 years. The couple met at a party in 2002 and married in 2010 in a secret wedding in Paris with only six guests. They are the parents to three kids, Olive, Elula and Montgomery.
“Happy 16th anniversary to my normal, everyday hubby. I love you,” Fisher wrote in 2017, alongside a photo of Cohen wearing underwear on a red carpet.
Being married to a rock star can’t be easy, but Sting and Trudie Styler’s 35-year relationship makes it look easy. The couple started dating in 1982 and married 10 years later.
The secret to staying married, according to Styler: “Obviously there has to be a chemistry—that’s why we can stay together for as long as we’ve been together. We have space apart because he tours and I go and do the things that I have to do with my films—we don’t live in each other’s pockets.”
Who could have known when Barack and Michelle Obama first went on a date in 1989, that 20 years later the couple would end up in the White House?
The 44th President met his future wife when they were both working at a Chicago law firm. She was his adviser and when he asked her out, she kept telling him it was inappropriate. Finally when they went on a date together, he “treated her to the finest ice cream Baskin-Robbins had to offer” and they had their first kiss.
The story of their early relationship was even made into a 2016 film called “Southside with You.” The couple married in 2002 and have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Jessica Biel’s “Seventh Heaven” co-star Beverly Mitchell witnessed the actress meeting her future husband, Justin Timberlake, at the 2007 Golden Globes.
“I was there, like, the moment the love connection happened. I was, like, ‘OK, this is happening.’ It was so cute because they were like—it’s that moment like, ‘I like you, I think you like me.’ It was very, very sweet. They were definitely flirting,” Mitchell said of the couple’s meeting.
After a brief breakup in 2011, the couple got engaged and married in 2012. They now have a son named Silas.
Sometimes you can meet the love of your life simply by walking down the street. When David Burtka spotted Neil Patrick Harris on a midtown street in New York City, he stopped to introduce himself.
“I thought it would be nice to know him, but I didn’t think in a million years I’d start dating him,” he said. But the couple became friends and eventually became a couple. The pair married in 2014 and and have two children, twins Gideon and Harper.
If opposites attract, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard might just be a perfect example of that. When they first met in 2007, “he was a drug addict and he was wild, and I was very much a good girl who went to Catholic school,” Bell has said.
Over the course of their relationship, Shepard got sober, and the two bridged their differences. The coupled pledged not to wed until marriage equality existed for all Americans, so they became engaged after part of the Defense of Marriage Act fell. The couple wed in 2013 in the clerk’s office and have two daughters together, Delta and Lincoln.
Comedy is what originally bonded Tina Fey and her musician husband Jeff Richmond. The couple dated for seven years after meeting at The Second City in Chicago in 1993, where Richmond was the musical director and Fey a performer. They later moved to New York City and worked on “Saturday Night Live” together. The couple always had a good working relationship as well as a personal one, so it’s not a surprise that their relationship lead them to collaborate on Fey’s show “30 Rock,” as well as the Broadway musical “Mean Girls” based on the movie of the same name. The couple married in 2001 and have two daughters together, Alice and Penelope.
While they’ve never married, Oprah Winfrey and Stedman Graham have had one of the longest-lasting relationships in show business. The couple began dating in 1986 after meeting at a charity event in Chicago. The couple briefly got engaged in 1992 but called it off. Winfrey claims it was the best decision they could have made for their relationship.
“We would not have stayed together, because marriage requires a different way of being in this world,” she said. “His interpretation of what it means to be a husband and what it would mean for me to be a wife would have been pretty traditional, and I would not have been able to fit into that.”
Despite their unconventional relationship, they have been together for over 30 years.
Margeaux Baulch Klein is a freelance writer and digital strategist based in Los Angeles. She has written for publications like the Huffington Post, New York Daily News, Bustle, and HelloGiggles, among others.
