Given that celebrities spend a great deal of their lives in the media spotlight, it’s impressive when a star-powered duo manages to create and nurture a loving bond built to withstand the test of time. How do they forge a path through the trials and tribulations of fame to make love last?
Here are some words of relationship wisdom from celebrity couples living their own successful offstage/offscreen love stories.
GOLDIE HAWN AND KURT RUSSELL
Actors Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have been happily unwed for almost 40 years, proving that true love amid the glitz, glamour, and drama of Hollywood does exist. Having both experienced the difficulties of divorce, marriage has never been on their radar…and that’s just the way they like it. Both have agreed that what keeps them going strong four decades after they first met is making the choice ever day to be together.
“A lasting relationship isn’t about marriage. It’s about compatibility and communication. And you both need to want it to work,” said Hawn in 2015. “If one person does not want it to work, it isn’t going to work. Intention is the key. It’s also about not losing yourself in each other. Being together, two pillars holding up the house and the roof, and being different, not having to agree on everything, learning how to deal with not agreeing. Everything’s a choice.”
DAME HELEN MIRREN AND TAYLOR HACKFORD
Together since 1986 and married since 1997, Oscar winner Dame Helen Mirren and film director Taylor Hackford have spent the better part of their union traveling for work, focusing on the importance of their partnership and staying connected despite rarely being in the same place at the same time. That, however, changed during the coronavirus lockdowns of 2020 when the twosome finally had the opportunity to actually spend quality time together.
“For the first time in 30 odd years of marriage we sat at the table opposite each other and had dinner together every night for six months,” she on The Graham Norton Show. “It was fantastic, brilliant. It’s been a wonderful way for the two of us to bond, in a weird way. I think it’s been a very bonding experience.”
TINA TURNER AND EDWIN BACH
One of the greatest love stories of our time belongs to rock n’ roll legend Tina Turner and Edwin Bach. The two met in 1985 when Bach, a German music executive, picked her up from the airport ahead of a concert. Their love story flourished from there and the two tied the knot almost 30 years later, with Bach donating one of his kidneys to her when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2017. Turner and Bach remainded married and very much in love up until her death on May 24. They would’ve celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary on July 4.
“We grant each other freedom and space to be individuals at the same time we are a couple,” Turner wrote in her 2020 book Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good. “Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame. He shows me that true love doesn’t require the dimming of my light so that he can shine. On the contrary, we are the light of each other’s lives, and we want to shine as bright as we can, together.”
RUPAUL AND GEORGES LEBAR
Emmy-winning TV personality RuPaul and his husband Georges LeBar were married in 2017, but the two have been coupled since their first meeting on the dancefloor at Limelight in 1994. They are the epitome of opposites attract, but for the American drag queen and the Australian rancher, it’s been a perfect match since day one.
RuPaul says that his and Georges’ relationship is founded in trust. “He and I know that on this planet where there are millions and millions of people, the person I have found on this planet that I like the very most is him,’ he said to The Guardian in March 2018. “And I know that for him the person he loves the most on this planet is me. I know that, there’s no doubt in my mind.”