15 Beloved, Long-Term Celebrity Couples, Then and Now

It's true that many Hollywood relationships come and go before the ink on the tabloid pages is even dry. But then there are those long-term celebrity couples who've proven all the naysayers wrong. These lovebirds have beaten the odds, with relationships that have spanned decades. To see how much things have changed and yet stayed exactly the same, we're comparing couples as they looked when they first started dating to where they are now. Keep reading to remember their honeymoon phases.

RELATED: The 18 Most Secretive Celebrity Couples of the Past 40 Years.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High breakout Phoebe Cates first met Sophie's Choice actor Kevin Kline during the audition process for 1983's The Big Chill. He got the part, she didn't, and that might have been that. But Cates and Kline ended up in each other's orbit again a few years later and by 1989, they were married.

The couple are still going strong over 30 years since they walked down the aisle. They have two children, Owen Kline and Greta Kline, and make their home in New York. While Kline is still active in the movie and TV business, Cates has stepped back from acting. Since 2005, she's been running her own boutique. But the couple do walk the occasional red carpet together, like this one, at the 2017 Tony Awards, where Kline won Best Actor for his performance in Present Laughter.

Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart made each other's acquaintance at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards, a couple of years after he separated from his second wife, Melissa Mathison. The Ally McBeal and Indiana Jones stars went public a few months later, attending events like the premiere of Ford's movie K19: The Widowmaker (pictured) arm-in-arm.

Flockhart and Ford tied the knot in 2010 and live a fairly private life on their 800-acre Wyoming ranch. They have one son, Liam Flockhart Ford, who Flockhart adopted at birth in 2001.

Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks were introduced in 1981, when she guest starred on his sitcom Bosom Buddies. Years later, however, Hanks admitted that he'd known of Wilson for much longer, having a crush on her from an episode of The Brady Bunch she'd appeared on back in the '70s. Still, the actors didn't start dating until they starred in the 1985 movie Volunteers opposite each other. After Hanks divorced actor Samantha Lewes, he and Wilson began stepping out together publicly in 1986; the above photo is from the premiere of Three Amigos that year.

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Hanks and Wilson have been married since 1988, after which they welcomed two children, rapper Chet Hanks and Truman Hanks. (Hanks also has two children, including actor Colin Hanks, from his marriage to Lewes.) The couple is still going strong more than three decades later.

Auditioning to play your future spouse's significant other on screen is one fateful way to meet. That's how Jada Pinkett and Will Smith crossed paths in 1994, when the former eventually lost out on the role of Lisa on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Nia Long. Regardless, the sparks were already flying, and the two embarked on a romantic relationship after Will separated from his first wife, Sheree Zampino Fletcher, with whom he has one son, Trey.

By 1997, Pinkett and Smith were married, and by 1998, she was pregnant with their first child together, Jaden (as pictured here). Three years after Jaden was born, they had their daughter Willow in 2000.

Pinkett and Smith aired out their most pressing issues in a much-talked about 2020 episode of Pinkett's Facebook show with her daughter and mother, Red Table Talk. Despite confirming rumors of affairs and other drama, the actors said they remain committed to each other and their marriage.

Speaking to fellow actor Sigourney Weaver for a feature in Interview, Jamie Lee Curtis said of husband Christopher Guest, "I married Chris five months after seeing his picture in Rolling Stone." After learning that she shared an agent with the This Is Spinal Tap star, she left her phone number for him. He didn't call, but soon after, they saw each other across a restaurant. He rang her the next day, and they tied the knot in 1984.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb

With 37 years of marriage under their belts, Curtis and Guest are aspirational for those hoping for a lasting Hollywood commitment. In 2015, Curtis spilled the simple secret to staying together to Today: "Don't get divorced."

The couple share two children: 35-year-old Annie and 25-year-old Ruby.

When Kyra Sedgwick was 12, she went to see a play and waited outside afterward to compliment one of the actors, who just happened to be 19-year-old Kevin Bacon. The two met again, as adults, in 1987, when they were cast in the movie Lemon Sky. Sedgwick wasn't sure that she wanted to go out with Bacon, but eventually agreed. By 1988, they were married. Here they are attending a Broadway opening that year.

One of Hollywood's longest-lasting marriages, Sedgwick and Bacon's is still thriving after 32 years. In 2019, Sedgwick told Glamour that part of the reason they've stayed strong is that they don't take any pleasure in conflict with each other.

"We don't hit below the belt," she said of their disagreements. "Neither of us has the constitution for that, and I mean that in a good way. I don't think we could dish it out or take it, frankly. Ultimately, I don't want to fight and he doesn't either."

The couple has two kids together: 31-year-old composer Travis and 28-year-old actor Sosie.

The Office star John Krasinski and British actor Emily Blunt got lucky by choosing to go to the same restaurant one fateful night in 2008—albeit not with each other. The two were introduced by a mutual friend during that dinner and sparks flew.

Blunt and Krasinski have been married since 2010, when they said their vows at friend George Clooney's place in Lake Como, Italy. In 2014, they welcomed daughter Hazel Grace, and another daughter, Violet, followed in 2016. The couple birthed a different kind of baby together in 2018, when Blunt starred alongside her husband in the thriller A Quiet Place, which he also wrote and directed. They teamed up again for the 2021 sequel, proving that working together was no strain on their relationship.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres and Arrested Development star Portia de Rossi had known each other for a few years when they finally took their relationship to the next level in 2004 after their paths crossed again at a photoshoot. De Rossi, pictured here with DeGeneres at the 2006 Daytime Emmys, later told The Advocate that DeGeneres was a catalyst for her coming out publicly.

The couple got married in 2008, not long after it was made legal in California. Her wife of 12 years posted in support of DeGeneres when accusations of her talk show's leadership fostering a toxic working environment began to surface last year.

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band is a pretty obscure Disney movie, but the 1966 family flick is notable in Hollywood relationship history for introducing Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. But with Russell being 16 to Hawn's 21 at the time, nothing happened. Their love story didn't actually begin until they worked together again on 1984's Swing Shift, which started filming in 1983, when this photo was taken at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City.

Hawn and Russell have basically been together ever since. In fact, they started living together after their first date. Hey, when you know, you know. They have one son together, 34-year-old Wyatt, along with three kids from previous marriages (Boston is Russell's son with actor Season Hubley and Hawn has Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson from her marriage to Bill Hudson.)

Russell and Hawn have never married, because they simply don't see it as being that important to their relationship. In a 2020 interview on the British talk show Loose Women (via Elle), Hawn elaborated on their philosophy, saying, "For me, I chose to stay, Kurt chose to stay, and we like the choice."

Both huge teen idols at the time, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar hit it off when they starred in the 1997 slasher movie I Know What You Did Last Summer. And it was actually a small inconvenience that brought them together: Gellar didn't have a driver's license at the time, so Prinze chauffeured her around, which is how they realized they had so much in common. Here they are, early in their relationship, at the 2001 Teen Choice Awards.

The two actors (and foodies) have been married since 2002 and have two kids together, 11-year-old Charlotte and 8-year-old Rocky. On their 18th anniversary last year, Gellar posted a black-and-white shot of their wedding on Instagram with a sweet caption that shows just how solid these two still are: "You… are my favorite husband."

Jay-Z and Beyoncé went the route of many stalwart couples: they were friends first. The music powerhouses, pictured here at the U.S. Open in 2003, started dating in the late '90s/early '00s, which led to some of their early collaborations, like "'03 Bonnie and Clyde" and "Crazy in Love."

Despite some snags (as documented by Beyoncé's Lemonade album), she and Jay-Z appear to be tighter than ever. Coming up on 13 years of marriage, they also have three children together: 9-year-old Blue Ivy and 3-year-old twins Rumi and Sir.

While the Spice Girls were still going strong, Victoria Adams met footballer David Beckham at a charity match. About a year later, in 1998, the superstar couple announced their engagement at a press conference (pictured here).

Married nearly 22 years, the Beckhams are now a family of six. They have 21-year-old Brooklyn, 18-year-old Romeo, 15-year-old Cruz, and 9-year-old Harper. This past Christmas, Victoria posted this cozy shot of the family celebrating together in matching pajamas.

Country stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill couldn't deny the chemistry between them when Hill opened for McGraw on tour in 1996—even though she was engaged to someone else at the time. The "This Kiss" singer quickly put an end to that other relationship to pursue something special with her tour-mate, and the two were married before the year was out. This charity gala shot is from their public debut as a couple, just a few weeks before their surprise nuptials.

Whatever was in the air on that fateful tour certainly stuck around. The stars have been in wedded bliss for nearly 25 years, and their partnership has yielded three kids—Gracie, 23; Maggie, 22; and Audrey, 19—and several musical collaborations.

Despite their 25-year age difference, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas knew their love was the real deal right away. They met at a film festival in France in 1998, introduced through their mutual friends, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith. By the end of 2000, they were husband and wife and had their first son, Dylan, now 20. Three years later, they welcomed daughter Carys, who's 18 now. (Douglas also has 42-year-old son Cameron Douglas, from his marriage to producer Diandra Luker.)

Despite weathering illnesses, family legal troubles, and even a separation back in 2013, the stars are still hand-in-hand in 2021. At the start of the year, Zeta-Jones shared a photo of the pair kissing and wrote in the caption: ""I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss" William Shakespeare……."

Sarah Jessica Parker was fresh off a breakup with Robert Downey Jr. when her brothers introduced her to Matthew Broderick, who was directing a play for their New York theater company. A few months later, in 1992, the Ferris Bueller star got up the courage to call and ask her out.

Parker and Broderick walked down the aisle in 1997 and have three children together, 18-year-old James Wilkie and twin 11-year-old daughters, Marion and Tabitha. The actors were due to work together on a Broadway revival of the play Plaza Suite (playing three different married couples) in 2020 before the pandemic shut down live theater. Hopefully, when it's safe, fans will be able to see the long-time loves together on stage.

RELATED: 18 Photos of Celebrity Couples When They First Got Together.