10 stars who married their first loves
10 stars who married their first loves
JP MangalindanThu, July 30, 2026 at 9:00 PM UTC
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Credit: John Nacion/FilmMagic; Dave Benett/Getty
Celebrity marriages tend to make news twice: once for the wedding, once for the split. Tucked between those headlines is another story about the stars who found their person early and just stayed.
Some were high school sweethearts. Ron Howard took Cheryl Alley on a first date in 1970 and later said “there was never anybody else.” Jon Bon Jovi noticed Dorothea Hurley at their New Jersey high school because she let him copy her history answers. Others took a less direct route: Anna Strout was the first person Jesse Eisenberg ever dated after they met in 2001; following a 2012 breakup, they reunited for good about three years later.
Either way, they ultimately ended up with their first loves. The milestones keep stacking up, too: The Howards marked 51 years of marriage in June, and Ja Rule and Aisha Atkins reached their silver anniversary in April.
Read on to meet 10 stars who married their first loves, and hear, in their own words, how they met and what’s kept them together.
01 of 10
Ron Howard and Cheryl Howard
Cheryl and Ron Howard in London on July 18, 2022Credit: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/WireImage
The Happy Days star-turned-Oscar-winning director has spent more than half a century with the girl he met at John Burroughs High School in Burbank. His first date with Cheryl Alley — pizza and a movie — was on November 1, 1970, an anniversary he still marks. They married on June 7, 1975, years before he directed Splash (1984), Apollo 13 (1995), and built a producing empire. They also raised four children, including actress Bryce Dallas Howard.
Cheryl has appeared in every film he’s directed, even if it’s just an uncredited background part. It’s a superstition Howard holds onto; he once called her his “good luck charm” in an interview with the Television Academy.
“I met her, and there was never anybody else,” Howard told PEOPLE in 2019, crediting a partnership that outlasted every phase of his career. “She’s unbelievably supportive and always has been. Our compatibility has endured through all kinds of experiences.”
Marking their 50th anniversary, he distilled it further: “Love and respect each other enough to just keep paddling.”
02 of 10
Jeff Daniels and Kathleen Rosemary Treado
Kathleen Treado and Jeff Daniels at the 2019 Tony Awards on June 9, 2019, in New York CityCredit: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Jeff Daniels met Kathleen Rosemary Treado in high school in Chelsea, Mich., though the romance didn’t take off until college. They married on Friday, July 13, 1979.
By the mid-’80s, with his film career accelerating after Terms of Endearment (1983) and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), the couple left the coasts entirely and moved back to Chelsea to raise their three kids.
“I didn’t want to get contaminated by stardom,” Daniels told PEOPLE in 2024. “For the family, staying away from all the fame stuff felt like the right decision.”
In 2019, he summed up his devotion in just two words: “Kathleen’s permanent.”
03 of 10
Alan Jackson and Denise Jackson
Denise and Alan Jackson at the 60th Academy of Country Music Awards on May 8, 2025, in Frisco, TexCredit: Michael Buckner/Penske Media via Getty
The man who would eventually write “Remember When” met the subject of that song when they were teenagers in Newnan, Ga.
Alan Jackson and Denise Jackson (yes, that was her original surname) got married in December 1979, back when his record deal was still years away. Denise did her part to change that: While working as a flight attendant in 1985, she crossed paths with actor and musician Glen Campbell at the Atlanta airport and talked up her husband. Campbell gave her a card for his publishing company, which eventually signed Alan to his first songwriting deal.
The marriage survived a late-‘90s separation, a chapter Denise later chronicled in her memoir, and emerged stronger on the other side.
Accepting an honor at the ACM Awards in 2025, Alan Jackson reserved his biggest thank-you for one person: “I do want to especially thank one person who’s been my best friend since I was 17 years old. That’s my wife, Denise,” he said. “She’s loved me through the good and the bad and the happy and the sad and influenced me, given me three beautiful daughters, helped me keep my feet on the ground all these years. I would not be here without her.”
04 of 10
Bono and Ali Hewson
Bono and Ali Hewson at the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2025Credit: Dave Benett/Getty
Bono‘s band and his relationship with Ali Hewson entered his life almost exactly the same time. He met Alison Stewart at Dublin’s Mount Temple Comprehensive School. “He came up to me within the first day and asked, did I know where his class should be going?” she later recalled. “It was just an excuse to talk to me, and I thought, ‘What an eejit.’”
They began dating in 1976, with their first date falling during the same week that the band that eventually became U2 held its first rehearsal.
The pair married in August 1982 at a church in Raheny and went on to raise four kids, including Bad Sisters and Disclosure Day star Eve Hewson.
During a 2016 speech, Bono repeated the guidance Ali had given him since they were teenagers: “Don’t look down at me, but don’t look up at me either. Look across to me. I’m here.”
His own summary of the 40-plus years since is just as plainspoken: “Any time either of us got lost, the other would… be there to get the other one home.”
05 of 10
Jon Bon Jovi and Dorothea Bongiovi
Dorothea Bongiovi and Jon Bon Jovi in London on April 17, 2024Credit: Jeff Spicer/Getty
Before the arenas, Jon Bongiovi was a Sayreville War Memorial High School student who owed his history grades partly to Dorothea Hurley — because she let him copy her answers.
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“I was immediately drawn to her from the minute I saw her and that never changed,” he told PEOPLE in 2020.
The romance survived a brief split in 1985 and the band’s subsequent supernova ascent. In April 1989, mid-tour, he whisked Dorothea from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, where they married at the Graceland Wedding Chapel. No band, no label, no warning.
Asked in 2020 about the secret to their enduring marriage, Bon Jovi didn’t overcomplicate it. “We really like each other. We want to hang out,” the singer shared with PEOPLE.
Mutual respect matters too, he added: “We work hard at it, but we enjoy each other and we never fell for the trappings of what celebrity can do.”
06 of 10
Ja Rule and Aisha Atkins
Ja Rule and Aisha Atkins at the 27th Annual Angel Ball in New York City on Oct. 27, 2025Credit: John Nacion/FilmMagic
Long before Murder Inc., Jeffrey Atkins spotted the new girl at his middle school, Aisha Murray. “She was innocent but very pretty. All the guys were trying to holler at her,” Ja Rule recalled on TV One’s Uncensored in 2024, adding that they fell in love in high school and “never really looked back.”
He still talks fondly about their early years together, when some of their best dates took place at Red Lobster — and, he has since admitted, the occasional dine-and-dash when he was broke. (Aisha didn’t find out about that until years later.)
The two got married in April 2001 in a ‘40s gangster-themed wedding attended by 800 guests, tuxes and cigars included. This past spring, they celebrated 25 years together.
“Love you to the moon and back. Here’s to 25 more!!!” he wrote on social media. Two years earlier, marking their 23rd anniversary, Aisha had put it simply: “Can’t believe it’s been 23 years since we got married. I guess it goes by fast when you marry the love of your life!”
07 of 10
Max Thieriot and Lexi Murphy
Lexi Murphy and Max Thieriot at the 2024 CMT Music Awards on April 7, 2024, in AustinCredit: Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty
Fire Country co-creator and star Max Thieriot met Lexi Murphy on a Caribbean vacation when they were both 16. Seven years later, he took her back to the same spot to propose — then let her stew: “She ended up thinking it wasn’t going to happen because I waited a whole week before I asked,” he told Flaunt (via PEOPLE). They married at Lake Tahoe in June 2013.
“I’m not quite sure what she saw in me,” Thieriot said on The Talk in 2024, recalling that his aesthetic was “full skater” and that he had “some bleached blonde hair.” He had no doubts about her: “I don’t know if she knew I was the one, but I knew she was the one.”
08 of 10
Heather Morris and Taylor Hubbell
Taylor Hubbell and Heather Morris in Los Angeles on June 8, 2017Credit: Barry King/Getty
Heather Morris and her eventual husband, Taylor Hubbell, attended the same Arizona high school without ever crossing paths. The courtship began after he messaged her on MySpace once she had moved to Los Angeles to pursue a dance career. (A love story of its era.) Their attempts to make a long-distance relationship work were hit-or-miss, so he eventually moved to L.A., too.
Morris never played it cool, either. “I want to marry him so bad,” she told Fitness in 2011, at the height of her Glee breakthrough. “I love acting, but if it affects my relationship, then I won’t continue doing it.”
They married in Topanga, Calif., in May 2015, and now share two sons, Elijah and Owen.
Her read on why it works? “We’re both the youngest of three, so I think we kind of understand each other in that aspect. We’re both very observant people and aware of each other’s feelings… that’s just a really good dynamic that we have.”
09 of 10
Jesse Eisenberg and Anna Strout
Anna Strout and Jesse Eisenberg at the New York Film Festival premiere of ‘The Squid and the Whale’ in New York CityCredit: Jim Spellman/WireImage
Jesse Eisenberg met Anna Strout in 2001 on the set of The Emperor’s Club, where she was working as a producer’s assistant. Nearly a decade into their relationship, he gave Seventeen what he freely admitted was useless relationship advice. “Oh god, I don’t know, just be nice!” he joked. “I’ve had one girlfriend my whole life. I’ve never been on a date with anybody else. I don’t have good advice!”
The two split in 2012, found their way back to each other in 2015, and married in 2017, the same year they welcomed a son. His admiration for Strout hasn’t wavered.
“I married an amazing woman,” he said on Today in 2023, describing his hopes for their son as a plea: “Just be like her, please just be everything like her.”
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10 of 10
Tristan “Mack” Wilds and Christina Hammond
Christina Hammond and Tristan ‘Mack’ Wilds at the 2021 Soul Train Awards on Nov. 20, 2021, in New York CityCredit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty
Tristan Wilds met Christina Hammond when they were teenagers on Staten Island — while he was working on the set of The Wire. Though their relationship was on and off over the years, they continued finding their way back to each other as his acting career took off and he launched a Grammy-nominated career as the R&B artist Mack Wilds.
“At different times in our lives, we’re shown fairy tales don’t come true,” he said in 2021. “This one came true for me.”
Wilds has never been coy about why he stopped looking. “We knew if we were dealing with anybody else, if we would have gotten married to anybody else or any type of situation like that, we would’ve been settling,” he told OWN in 2022. Two decades in, first love turned out to be the whole story.
on Entertainment Weekly
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