Hollywood fairy tales: Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Michael J Fox and Tracy Pollan have decades-long marriages

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, along with a handful of other celebrities are celebrating milestone anniversaries in 2023.

It is often said marriage is hard work, and it takes a lot of effort to make sharing your life with another person work. It is no different for celebrities, as is evident by the number of celebrity breakup announcements each year.

Here are a few of Hollywood’s biggest stars who have made their marriages last for over two decades – and have created their happily ever afters.

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Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber

Supermodel Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in May 2023.

The couple first met at a mutual friend’s wedding, however, Crawford was still married to actor Richard Gere at the time, and Gerber was also in a relationship. This gave the couple an opportunity to build a strong foundation as friends prior to becoming a couple, something which Crawford said in a 2016 Master Class “keeps the relationship elevated” and ensures “a certain level of respect” between them.

Crawford and Gere’s divorce was finalized in 1995 after which she and Gerber started a romantic relationship. After a few years of dating, the couple got married in a secret ceremony in the Bahamas.

“I actually told a stylist friend of mine that I had to go to a black-and-white party, so to bring me some black dresses and some white dresses because we didn’t tell anyone we were getting married,” Crawford told Harper’s Bazaar in July 2016. “That was just one of the white dresses and it was perfect. It was off-the-rack Galliano, and I love it.”

Just one year after saying I do, the couple became a family when they welcomed their son, Presley Gerber, in July 1999. The pair welcomed daughter Kaia Gerber two years later in September 2001. Both their children have followed in Crawford’s footsteps, pursuing a career in modeling, with Kaia finding major success since debuting at fashion week in 2017.

Their 25-year marriage has not gone by without its fair share of bumps in the road, as Gerber was accused of cheating on Crawford in 2004. Gerber denied the allegations.

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“The allegations that are being made about me having extramarital affairs are completely unwarranted and fabricated,” he said in a statement at the time. “I love my wife and family more than anything, and we won’t allow such rumors to play any part in our relationship.”

Five years later, he was accused of sexual harassment from two of his former employees who claimed he fired them after they refused to kiss him. In a statement released by the Gerber Group at the time, the allegation was called “a blatant lie which will be proven false.”

The two managed to move past their troubles and remain committed to one another, and they have spoken out about their love for one another and how they keep the spark alive.

“If you just wait for the moment to strike, you’re going to have some dry spells. Sometimes you have to grease the wheels a little,” she told Redbook in 2011. “You just need to make it a priority and say tonight is going to be the night. If you’re not in the mood, it’s easy enough to get into the mood.”

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In July 2022, Gerber opened up to Haute Living about how much he loves Crawford, saying that “she means everything to me” and that “she’s still a small-town girl at heart” who’s No. 1 priority “is her family and making sure that we’re all happy.”

Crawford gave some insight into their relationship in April 2023, telling People they have “more traditional” roles at home, with Gerber taking on more masculine responsibilities, explaining, “If something around the house needs repair — he’ll repair it if he knows how” and she is “more in charge of making sure there are groceries in the house and menu planning” and scheduling.

The supermodel celebrated their anniversary on May 29 with a heartwarming Instagram post, sharing photos from their top secret wedding 25 years ago.

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“I want to congratulate “us” on making it 25 years. We have been blessed in so many ways, especially our two children,” she wrote in the caption. “Even with all the blessings, life is full of ups and downs and challenges. I’m proud of how we have navigated life together — looking to each other for strength and comfort. You have been my best friend and rock and I can’t imagine a life without you.”

Barbra Streisand and James Brolin

Legendary singer Barbra Streisand and actor James Brolin first met while on a blind date at a dinner party with a bunch of their mutual friends in 1996. It seems as though the two hit it off that night as they were married just two years later in July 1998 at their home in Malibu. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in June.

“I can’t tell you how lucky I am that this would happen to me so late in life,” Brolin said in his wedding speech, per People. At the time, Streisand was 54 and Brolin was 56. “Every night is a new adventure. Sleeping is a waste of time. I can’t wait to see her again in the morning.”

During an interview with W Magazine, Streisand revealed Brolin was not what she expected.

“I met him at a dinner and expected a bearded mountain-man type,” she said of Brolin, but he had apparently just cut his hair, leading her to ask, “Who screwed up your hair?” He would later go on to tell her that is when he fell in love with her.

“My fella likes to hear the truth,” she joked.

The two made their red-carpet debut as a couple at the New York City premiere of “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” a film directed by and starring Streisand, later appearing together on the 69th Academy Awards red carpet in 1997. Throughout the years, the two have appeared on countless red carpets together, supporting one another and their projects.

Both Brolin and Streisand were married to other people prior to finding love with each other, and they each had children with their respective partners. Streisand’s son, Jason Gould, and Brolin’s sons, Josh and Jess, and daughter Molly, came together to form one big happy blended family.

They’ve since welcomed four grandchildren and have fully embraced being grandparents. She told Variety in August 2021, “I’m enjoying my grandchildren and there’s nothing like family and home and pure love and joy and connection,” adding that family “is the most important thing to me now.”

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“She is really into it and I love that she is into it,” Brolin’s son, Josh, told People in June 2018, referring to Streisand. “I mean, it’s like very typical Jewish grandmother who is saturated by this event. It’s awesome.”

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In 2018, the couple celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Streisand marked the occasion with a sweet post on her Instagram, looking back on their years together, writing, “has it really been 22 years since our blind date @jamesbrolin? Married for 20 years. Happy anniversary honey. Bee. X”

Both Streisand and Brolin have spoken out about what they think is the secret to the success of their long-lasting marriage. Each time Brolin discusses their marriage, he explains the importance of “call[ing] somebody else in” when they can’t work something out on their own. He told “Access Hollywood” that it’s not always easy to do, but whatever their issue was it “just goes poof afterwards.”

“The secret is to listen carefully,” Streisand told Variety in August 2021. “I think to be a good actor, you have to listen. To be a good person, you have to listen. To be a good marriage partner, you have to listen. Hear the other person. Agree to disagree.”

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson

Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks are celebrating 35 years of marriage this year, having gotten married in April 1988 after dating for a few years.

The couple first met in 1981 when Wilson guest starred in “Bosom Buddies,” a show on which Hanks was a recurring character. At the time, Hanks was still married to his college sweetheart, Samantha Lewes. However, when they met again in 1984 while filming the movie “Volunteers,” Hanks was separated, and their instant friendship turned into a romantic connection.

“The success of our relationship was a matter of timing, maturity and our willingness to have an intimate connection,” Hanks told Oprah Winfrey in a September 2001 interview for “O, The Oprah Magazine.” “When I married Rita, I thought, ‘This is going to require some change on my part.’ I won’t deny that Providence was part of us finding each other, but our relationship isn’t magic — the way it’s shown in movies.” 

He continued, “In real life, our connection is as concrete as me sitting here. Not that marriage doesn’t come close to being hell in a handbasket sometimes. But we both know that no matter what, we’ll be with each other, and we’ll get through it.”

Wilson has also spoken about her instant connection with Hanks, telling Kelly Clarkson on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in 2020 that one of the things she loves about the actor is “he’s a great storyteller” who “makes [her] laugh all the time.”

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Just one year after getting married, Hanks won the Golden Globe Award in 1989 for his role in “Big,” and he paid tribute to his new wife in his speech, saying, “I married a Greek babe” and “thank you, babe, for marrying me. You made my year already, but thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press.”

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He would go on to pay tribute to her in a number of acceptance speeches, including when he won an Oscar in 1995 and said he won the award because “the woman I share my life with has taught me and demonstrates for me every day just what love is.”

“I view my wife as my lover, and we have a bond that goes beyond words like wife or girlfriend or mother. For example, I was able to construct a number of things in ‘Philadelphia’ because of my relationship with Rita,” he told Winfrey. “The way my character felt about his lover is the way I feel about mine. The same was true when I played Forrest Gump, who loved Jenny. Without my connection with Rita, I don’t know how I would’ve been able to connect with what Forrest was going through.”

The couple welcomed their first child together, son Chet, in 1990 and their second son, Truman, in 1995. Hanks also has two kids from his marriage to Lewes, Collin and Elizabeth Hanks.

Throughout their marriage, the two have faced every obstacle that’s come their way with love and support for one another. In 2015, Wilson announced she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.

“Who knew it would make you even closer?” Wilson told the New York Times in May 2015. “You never know how your spouse is going to react in a situation like this. I was so amazed, so blown away by the care my husband gave me. It was such a normal, intimate time.”

Looking back on their relationship on their 31st anniversary, Wilson hinted at what the secret behind their successful partnership is.

“We got married, we committed to each other, we love each other, and we work hard at our relationship,” Wilson told Us Weekly in April 2019. “Not only do we love each other, we really like each other, and we like being together, and we support each other, and we keep the communication channels open. That’s always important.”

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A few years later, the couple joked to Fox News Digital that they do have a secret but have “bottled it” and are “not going to tell anyone,” adding they’ll “sell it to you individually for $17 billion.”

They celebrated their 35th anniversary in April with an Instagram post showing the two of them with a cake. It was captioned, “35 years of marriage. April 30, 1988. Love is everything.”

Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan

Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary this year, having gotten married in July 1988, four years after they initially met.

The two first crossed paths when Pollan joined the cast of “Family Ties” in season four of the show, playing Fox’s character’s love interest. Both were in relationships with other people, Pollan with Kevin Bacon and Fox with Nancy McKeon. However, by the time they worked together on “Bright Lights, Big City,” they were both single and quickly started dating.

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Just seven months after they began dating, Fox popped the question, telling People in 1989, “[He] wasn’t really worried that she would say no.” They got married on July 16, 1988, in Woodstock, Virginia, and despite them trying to keep the event a secret, paparazzi found them.

“It was nuts,” Fox told People in 1989. “Inside, it was like anybody else’s wedding. It was a house party. We rolled back the rugs and danced the night away. You’ve got everyone in the world that you love in a one-acre area and five idiots are flying over your head. You can’t let kids run down the street because there are people with cameras there, grabbing them and pumping them and scaring them.”

Since getting married, the couple has welcomed four children: Sam Fox in 1989, twins Aquinnah and Schuyler in 1995, and Esme Fox in 2001. Not long after the birth of their first child, Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In his 2023 documentary, “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” Fox recalled the moment he told Pollan about his diagnosis, revealing she reacted by whispering “in sickness and in health” into his ear.

“My wife is just an amazing person,” Fox said in a November 2018 interview with Closer Weekly. “I credit her with a lot of my ability to deal with this — and also shutting down my early attempts to deal with it in a non-productive way by drinking or getting angry.”

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After going public with his diagnosis in 1998, he and Pollan created the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research in 2000, which has since raised more than $1 billion.

Recently, Fox has spoken more openly about how Parkinson’s has affected not only his own life but also how he feels his diagnosis has affected his wife. Fox explained that he feels bad for handing Pollan a burden that “wasn’t hers to endure.”

“She has this disease, too, in a sense because I do,” Fox told CBC News in a May 2023 interview. “Right from the beginning, before any of this happened, I took this young actress whose career was hopping, she was doing great, she was beautiful, and I made her a single mother and I took her out of the game. … I always felt bad about that and here I was doing it again with Parkinson’s, kind of superimposing my agenda and a trial on her that wasn’t hers to endure.”

When speaking about their lasting marriage in the past, the couple told People in 2018 that they both come from big families with an “us against the world” mentality, which is something they have implemented as well. Pollan also told readers it is important to give one another “the benefit of the doubt.”

More recently, Fox told People magazine at the SXSW premiere of his movie that “any good in our family, anything good that we do, comes from her.” Pollan then gave readers more insight into what she believes makes their relationship work.

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“I think we really listen to each other, we are there for each other when we need each other,” Pollan said. “And then we also give each other space when that’s needed. Just feeling off of what’s needed at the moment and trying to be there.”

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary this year. The couple first met in 1978 when Bacon was approached by a 12-year-old Sedgwick, who was a fan of his.

Despite the fact that Bacon didn’t remember their first interaction, the couple hit it off when they met for a second time in 1987 when filming the movie “Lemon Sky.” They went on their first date after Bacon suggested they go out to dinner one day. Sedgwick – who was in her early 20s at the time – didn’t take the suggestion seriously, but Bacon was waiting for her after Sedgwick’s massage appointment. The two got engaged in December of that year.

“When I did fall in love with Kevin, it really just felt like there was some urgency to get married, and I don’t know what it was. Suddenly this thing came over me, and I was terrified,” Sedgwick told Vulture in 2019. Still, she had no doubts. “He was just the one, you know? He was just the soul mate, he was just the one.”

Bacon proposed to her on Christmas Eve, telling Kelly Clarkson in April 2021 he’s “really not a jewelry guy,” and although he thought the ring he picked was great, Sedgwick “[woke] up in the middle of the night, and she’s crying,” before telling him she didn’t like the ring. 

The couple tied the knot in September 1988 and welcomed their first child together, a son named Travis, a year later in June 1989. Three years later, the couple welcomed their second child, a daughter named Sosie, in March 1992.

Over the years, the couple appeared in a number of movies together, including “Pyrates,” “Murder in the First,” “Cavedweller,” “Loverboy,” which featured their two children and which Bacon also directed, and a mockumentary for Funny or Die called “A Duck Walks in on a Couple Having Sex,” which Bacon also directed.

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In 2008, Sedgwick told Redbook about how her relationship with Bacon has evolved over the years, reflecting on how she continued to get to know Bacon as the years went on.

“I loved him, but I didn’t know him, and he probably didn’t know me,” she said.

“You grow together and learn more about each other. I think the trust gets deeper, and the dependency gets deeper, which is scary,” Sedgwick explained to the outlet. “There was a part of me at the beginning of our marriage that thought, ‘I’m cool alone. I love him, but I’m strong enough to handle life without him.’ But now he is the person I count on to live and walk through life with. It’s a dependency that is there and large and real and profound.”

In December 2011, the couple’s money manager was arrested for running a Ponzi scheme. Sedgwick and Bacon opened up about how the loss affected them in their book, “What Makes a Marriage Last.” They lost their savings when Bernie Madoff was arrested, and although it was a tough time, they made it through.

“We were both in shock at first,” Sedgwick wrote. “But then you do a really quick body scan to get some perspective — you have to; otherwise, you just freak out: our children were safe, we were still working, we could make the money back … So, yeah, it felt awful and scary for a long time, But we knew we were going to get through it.”

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The couple often share their love for one another on Instagram, posting throwback photos from early in their relationship but also photos and videos of them now. Bacon’s Instagram is filled with videos of the two of them singing together, sometimes accompanied by their goats.

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The couple even jumped on the TikTok Footloose challenge, with Bacon posting the two of them trying out the dance moves.

“I don’t remember this being part of the original #Footloose choreography,” Bacon captioned the photo before adding, “but figured we’d give it a spin.”

“I’m incredibly lucky,” Sedgwick told “Access Hollywood” in January 2023. “There’s no secrets to this. I just got lucky really young at a time when I probably wasn’t that smart. I was married at 23, and I met him when I was 21. I was like, ‘This is the one, and I’ve got no question.’”

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When it comes to the secret to their long-lasting marriage, Sedgwick told People in March 2023 that she thinks “a sense of humor is crucial,” and Bacon explained his favorite moments with his wife are when they’re “walking down the street together just shooting the s— in the middle of the night,” saying that “still feels like a nice place to be.”

While on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in March 2023, Bacon gave audiences some advice on how to make a marriage last.

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“If I was to give some advice, I would say the one thing you don’t want to do is take a celebrity’s advice on how to stay married,” he joked. “It’s kind of a cop-out, but it’s good.”