The Most Famous Couple The Year You Were Born

The only constant, as they say, is change. People change, tastes change, and what's considered cool, interesting, scandalous, and lame also changes as the years go by. What might be fascinating now is boring in just a few months time. Celebrities are the same way. They fall in love, like, or lust with one another (to the fascination of the rest of us,) and then get bored and break up — sometimes after just a brief period of paparazzi-flashbulb-lit intensity. 

But while individual celebrity couplings may change as quickly as Taylor Swift can write and record an album, the one thing that never changes is the idea of a "hot celebrity couple." Every year, we're enraptured with the relationship of one particular famous couple more than any other. Here's a look back in time at the star romances (and marriages and breakups) that filled the pages of entertainment magazines and littered the waiting room of the hospital while you were busy getting born.

Right after his divorce from actress Shirley Douglas — daughter of Tommy Douglas, the architect of Canada's public health care system — rising star Donald Sutherland starred in the prostitution thriller Klute. Sutherland portrays detective John Klute, and Jane Fonda plays lady of the evening Bree Daniels, a role for which she won the Oscar for best actress. Beyond acclaim and trophies, Sutherland and Fonda also got ... close with one another. 

According to the Daily Mail, Fonda said she was intimate with Sutherland during the shoot, and that he soon fell hard for her. The two dated throughout 1971 and engaged in the fun things couples in 1971 liked to do, like conceive a politically-themed, anti-Vietnam War variety show and take it on the road. That show was titled FTA – '70s slang for "f*** the army, and it was a hit in college towns across the country (and not a hit with the government, who allegedly put the couple under surveillance.) Anyway, Fonda eventually broke up with Sutherland because she didn't want to be tied down.

Largely a footnote of Hollywood history today, Ali MacGraw was extraordinarily popular in the early 1970s. She won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for her starring role in Love Story, the highest-grossing movie of 1970. In 1972, a Hollywood Foreign Press Association poll named her the most popular female movie star in the world. Later that year, she starred in another massive hit: The Getaway, a romantic crime thriller, with Steve McQueen. 

Just about as popular as MacGraw, McQueen was nicknamed the "King of Cool" because, well, he was cool, with his icy stare and confident performances in movies such as Bullitt and The Great Escape. The two met on the set of The Getaway and to the delight of celebrity watchers, married in 1973. 

According to the Daily Mail, McQueen cheated on MacGraw and forbade her from working. Her career halted for four years because McQueen allegedly wanted her to stay home to cook and clean. She'd had enough by 1978.

Actress and singer Cher has been in the spotlight since the mid-1960s, when she starred on a variety show with her then-husband, Sonny Bono. She's been involved in a number of high-profile romances beyond Bono, notably with legendary rock guitarist Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band, one of the most successful groups of the era, known for hits such as "Whipping Post" and "Ramblin' Man."

According to Entertainment Weekly, the famous pair married in 1975, separated a week later, got back together, then almost split up again ... but Cher found out she was pregnant with their son, Elijah. Cher and Allman's time together dovetailed with one Cher's many attempts at reinvention. She adopted more of a rock approach to music in the mid-70's and even recorded 1975's Two the Hard Way with Allman. That record bafflingly billed the couple as "Allman and Woman."

But their shared love for music and their son couldn't preserve this famous celebrity couple. Cher and Allman reportedly split for good by 1977. 

By the late '70s, Burt Reynolds was the smirking, ultra-macho star of ridiculous and ridiculously popular action movies such as Gator and Smokey and the Bandit. The latter became the third-highest grossing film of 1977. In the movie, Bandit (Reynolds) is in the middle of a cross-country car chase when he picks up a runaway bride (Field) who he calls Frog because she's "always hoppin' around." At the time, Field had not yet won two Oscars and was best known for playing the innocent Gidget on Gidget and the really innocent flying nun on The Flying Nun. The unlikely co-stars soon became an unlikely couple

In real life, the Bandit and Frog were together for five years and did four movies together before a nasty split for which Reynolds takes full responsibility. Regrets? He has a few. "She was the love of my life and I screwed the relationship up," he told the Daily Mail. "That sense of loss never goes away."

In 1970, Eric Clapton enjoyed one of the biggest hits of his storied carrier with his band Derek and the Dominoes and the song "Layla." It's a tune about unrequited love, and Clapton reportedly wrote it about his frustration with being unable to hook up with British model Pattie Boyd. She details the complicated story in her memoir, Wonderful Tonight (via The History Channel). 

According to Boyd, she was once married to George Harrison of the Beatles, who just so happened to be Clapton's best friend. Trying out the "close enough" method, Clapton took up with Boyd's sister, but she broke up with him after she realized who "Layla" was about. Clapton and Boyd then had a brief affair, only for Boyd to go back to Harrison before they finally divorced in 1977. After Clapton kicked heroin, Boyd gave him another chance (apparently, "Layla" is just that good of a song) and they married in March 1979. That dramatic story guaranteed that when Clapton and Boyd finally did get married, they were going to be a gossip page smash.

But after all that, there was no happily-ever-after for this famous couple. Clapton apparently didn't appreciate what he had when he finally got it because he fathered a child with an Italian TV star in 1987. He and Boyd split not long after.

Celebrity couples are one thing, but no famous-people news gets more people more excited than a good old fashioned royal wedding. In July 1981, the lovely and gregarious Lady Diana Spencer became "The People's Princess" when she wed Charles, Prince of Wales, first in line to the English throne, in a lavish state wedding at St. Paul's Cathedral. With only a hint of hyperbole, the press called it "the wedding of the century."

Breathlessly reported highlights of the day included details about the 20-year-old Diana's silk taffeta gown adorned with lace, sequins, and 10,000 pearls, as well as the couple's decision to exclude from the vows the bride's traditional promise to "obey" her 32-year-old husband. The televised event was watched by as many as 750 million people around the world, including the millions of stargazing Americans who got up in the middle of the night to see it.

Both Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell had been famous for a long time — and been through a few famous romances — before they permanently hooked up in 1983. 

In the '60s, Hawn was a cast member on the then-hip show Laugh-In, and she won an Oscar for 1969's Cactus Flower. She went on to star in a string of hit comedies with Chevy Chase (Same Time Next Year, Foul Play) and have a couple of kids with pop star Bill Hudson of the Hudson Brothers. (Those kids are Oliver Hudson of Rules of Engagement and bona fide movie star Kate Hudson.) 

Russell had been famous since childhood for his TV and film roles, chiefly the many affable Disney live-action movies he starred in, such as The Barefoot Executive and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. 

Hawn and Russell initially met in the late '60s on the set of The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. Hawn says there was an attraction, but she resisted because of propriety and the law (She was 21; Russell was just 16.) When they met again filming Swing Shift in 1983, they went for it and never looked back.

In 1985, there were few musicians as popular as Billy Joel and few women as lusted after as supermodel Christie Brinkley. And somehow, your dad's favorite singer and your dad's dream girl got together and eventually got married. 

Here's how that happened, according to Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography (via Page Six): After splitting with his first wife, Elizabeth, in 1982, Joel took a vacation to St. Bart's, where he wound up messing around on the piano in a bar. He attracted attention from three beautiful women: supermodels Elle Macpherson and Christie Brinkley, and singer Whitney Houston. Joel made friends with all three, as one does. He reconnected with Brinkley back home in New York, but the first night he took her home ... Macpherson showed up unannounced. Brinkley supposedly left, Macpherson stayed, but Brinkley came back into the picture later. 

Joel and Brinkley got married in 1985, conceived their daughter, Alexa Ray, on their wedding night, and went very public with their love via the video for Joel's mega-hit "Uptown Girl," which casts Joel as a mechanic and Brinkley as a fancy rich lady with an unlikely interest in him.

The tabloids are sure to go crazy when you combine a big movie star with a TV star whose hard-partying ways were making headlines on their own, and so it went with Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. According to People, shortly after Moonlighting star Bruce Willis was arrested for assaulting a police officer summoned to his three-day-long house party, he met and fell in love with Demi Moore (the female Brat Packer who wasn't Molly Ringwald) at the premiere of the 1987 movie Stakeout. 

That film, by the way, starred Moore's previous boyfriend and St. Elmo's Fire co-star Emilio Estevez. Anyway, Willis and Moore were billed as "Hollywood's Power Couple," and they flew off to Vegas to get married in November of that year. Their first child (of three), Rumer, was born nine and a half months later. Then they did all the things regular couples do, like have more kids (Scout, Tallulah), buy most of an Idaho town, endure countless rumors of affairs with other movie stars, and voice characters in Beavis and Butt-head Do America. This love story ended with a breakup in 1998.

Paula Abdul was involved in two high-profile romances in 1989: one with rapper MC Skat Kat, with whom she had myriad insurmountable differences, and the other with fist-spinning, whoop-whoop-whooping late-night talk show host Arsenio Hall. Both Hall and Abdul were at the peak of relevance and coolness at the time. Abdul had jumped from a job as a Laker Girl cheerleader to choreographer to pop star. Her 1989 album Forever Your Girl produced hit after hit, like the aforementioned "Opposites Attract," "Cold Hearted," and "Straight Up." Abdul and Hall had both been involved with the 1988 movie Coming to America. Hall co-starred as Semmi, while Abdul choreographed the movie's wedding dance. 

In 1989, Hall appeared in the video for "Straight Up" around the same time that he'd started hosting The Arsenio Hall Show. By attracting a younger, hipper, and more multicultural audience, Hall became the first talk show host to really cut into the dominance of Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show. Alas, things didn't work out for this wild pair. After they split up, Abdul reportedly had a fling with John Stamos — yep, Uncle Jesse from Full House.