Celebrity Couples Who Have Been Together Ages, But Never Married

Hollywood couples are not known for their longevity, but that never stops us from investing in our favorite relationships. Oftentimes, our beloved couples end up walking down the aisle — sometimes way too quickly — but there are also a fair number of celebrity twosomes who opt to forgo the legality of traditional marriage. Here we have collected some of the greatest celebrity couples who have been together for a very long time without ever getting wed, and some of them may surprise you (especially since certain people on this list do refer to their partners as "husband" or "wife").

We did not include any couple who is still under the 10-year mark, though we have high hopes for the continued relational bliss of Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, Diane Kruger and Norman Reedus, Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor, and many others. We also did not include any couple where there is uncertainty about whether or not they are wed, such as Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes — who are commonly reported to have married at some point, despite there being no details on when or where. It is also worth noting that, on occasion, a longstanding unmarried couple will suddenly decide to get married — like John Corbett and Bo Derek, who married in 2020 but have been together since 2002 — which means that any of the couples on this list could potentially still say "I do". So, here are 15 celebrity couples who have been together ages but have never married (at least not yet).

It takes a strong human to be able to make a life with a celebrity as enormously famous as Oprah Winfrey, given her larger-than-life presence that is sure to dominate each and every day. But luckily for her, our favorite media mogul found her life partner decades ago in the forms of Stedman Graham, an accomplished businessperson, author, and speaker. Winfrey and Graham first met in 1986, and once Graham became single, the pair went on a date. The next year, Graham was already making appearances on Winfrey's talk show and the rest is history. The couple has been together for nearly four decades but has never married.

Despite never walking down the aisle, Graham and Winfrey are technically engaged — as they have been since Graham proposed in 1992. Throughout the 1990s and even into the early 2000s, many speculated about when they would tie the knot, but people have all but given up by now. Winfrey has made it clear that marriage is not an important thing for her, and that it is not even really a topic of conversation for the couple. "Nobody believes it, but it's true," she told Vogue in 2017. "The only time I brought it up was when I said to Stedman, 'What would have happened if we had actually gotten married?' And the answer is: 'We wouldn't be together.' We would not have stayed together, because marriage requires a different way of being in this world."

Many people still link Courteney Cox to her ex-husband David Arquette, since they were such a visible couple and have remained good friends over the years. That said, the popular couple have been divorced since 2013, which is also the same year that Cox met her current partner, Johnny McDaid. McDaid, an Irish native, is a musician and a member of the band Snow Patrol. He is a staple on Cox's Instagram, but the two have weathered a few bumps in the road on the way to bliss.

The relationship began after the pair were introduced by their mutual friend, singer Ed Sheeran, and it got hot and heavy quickly. By April 2014, Sheeran confirmed to The Mirror that Cox and McDaid were already living together, only eight or nine months into their coupling. They announced their engagement in June of that year but called it off and fully broke up in November 2015. But it took only months for Cox and McDaid to reunite, and things were relatively smooth sailing from there. "We were engaged, and now we're just together," Cox said on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in 2019. "We broke off our engagement and he moved to England. Then we got back together, and it's actually better than it was before." And even though the COVID-19 pandemic drove an ocean-sized wedge between them, Cox and McDaid would not break apart for a second time.

It was mutual friends who introduced actor Rose Byrne to her eventual partner, Bobby Cannavale, around the time she was wrapping up a five-season run on the TV show "Damages." Cannavale — who was previously married to screenwriter Jenny Lumet, with whom he shares son Jake —and Byrne made their public debut at an event in December 2012 and walked their first red carpet together six months later. They now share two children, sons Rocco Robin (born 2016) and Rafael (born 2017). Byrne and Cannavale have also appeared in a variety of shared projects over the years, including the film "Annie," and the miniseries "Mrs. America."

Because of our culture's fixation on marriage, Cannavale and Byrne have been asked about their marital status on numerous occasions. Though they have not wed, Byrne has been known to refer to her spouse as "husband" in some interviews. "He's practically my husband, so calling him that is easier,' she told ES Magazine in 2017. In that same interview, Byrne also said that the pair will get married "one day" because "why not?" — although here we are, years later, and there is still no ring on that finger. "I keep going, 'Let's get around to it, let's do it.' And then, you know, you have a baby, and then, oh, there's another baby," Byrne told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2021. "I guess for us it's just been, we didn't do it, we'll do it, then – no! Pandemic."

For years, rumors swirled that actor Tilda Swinton was in a polyamorous relationship with two men —John Byrne and Sandro Kopp, both of whom are artists. Swinton set the record straight in an interview with Bust magazine in 2010, wherein she explained that while she remained close with former lover Byrne, she was only partnered with Kopp in the present. Byrne is the father of Swinton's twins, and so it makes sense that they would remain close friends. "I have never been married. I have two children with John Byrne...and we've not been a couple for many years, and we're very close friends, and we bring up our children together," she explained in the interview, as reported by the Daily Express. "For the last five years, I've been in another relationship. It's very boring and it's important to rectify, because there's some fantasy about us all living in a big hut together."

Unfortunately for Swinton, a quick Google search makes it extremely clear that the rumors still abound. But really, Swinton does not seem like the type to lose too much sleep over what others think about her or her lifestyle. She is still in a relationship with Kopp, with whom she was seen vacationing in 2021. So, she may not be married or in a three-way partnership, but Swinton's out there living her best life. Oh, and did we mention that Kopp is nearly two decades Swinton's junior and super cute? Get it, Tilda.

A lot of words come to mind when we think of comedian Ricky Gervais, and romantic is not one of them. But despite his wise-cracking, hard-shelled exterior, Gervais has to be at least somewhat of a lover since he has been in a relationship with his partner Jane Fallon for roughly two thirds of his life. Gervais and Fallon met in 1982, when both were students at University College London. In many interviews, Gervais has affirmed that they are dearly devoted to one another but refuse to marry and have no desire for children. "Just didn't fancy it. Too much hassle. Not something either of us wanted to do," he explained to The Sunday Times in 2010. "We just ... didn't fancy dedicating 16 years of our lives. And there are too many children, of course."

Of course, not wanting kids does not mean one cannot want to get married, but that too has always been on Gervais's no-go list. According to The Mirror, Gervais and Fallon's lack of religious beliefs played a big role in their stance. "We are married for all intents and purposes, everything's shared and actually our fake marriage has lasted longer than a real one," he said. "But there's no point in us having an actual ceremony before the eyes of God because there is no God." It may not be a popular opinion, but it is straightforward and honest — the typical Gervais way of communicating.

Action star extraordinaire and full-on zaddy Jason Statham is not legally married but is definitely off the market. Statham began dating supermodel and actor Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in 2009, after the pair hit it off at a party in London. In an Instagram Q&A, Huntington-Whiteley said that "it was instant chemistry" between the two, despite their two-decade age difference. The couple got engaged in 2016, but they have chosen not to walk down the aisle — at least yet. That is not to say that there have not been some advancements in their relationship since 2016, as Statham and Huntington-Whiteley have had two children in the years since. Their son, Jack Oscar, was born in 2017, and their daughter, Isabella James, came along in 2022.

Marriage is still a possibility, too, if we are to believe Huntington-Whiteley's words. "I think the time will come," she told "Extra" in 2018. "We've been so, like, focused on our work for so long and then Jack came along. And I think, you know, we definitely talk about it. We're looking forward to that time — but it's also not a huge priority to us." We absolutely adore this couple — who just may be one of the sexiest pairings in Hollywood — so we don't care if they marry or not, as long as they don't split up. And whether they are at a fashion show or on a red carpet, they look more in love, so we have high hopes.

As far as celebrities go, Canadian actor Evangeline Lilly has always been rather private. She pops up from time to time to do press but maintains a life far away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. And we mean that literally, since Lilly lives not in Los Angeles, but in a gorgeous 1970s home in Hawaii. It makes sense, since Lilly rose to fame after starring on the show "Lost," which was filmed on the island of Oahu. The set of "Lost" is also where Lilly met her partner, Norman Kali, who was a production assistant that worked on 47 episodes of the six-season show.

Lilly and Kali have two children — son Kahekili and another son whose name has never been reported in the media. "Becoming a mother has really helped me put my feet on the ground and given me a very powerful sense of self and a powerful sense of priority in life," Lilly told OceanDrive after her older son's birth. "It helps put everything in perspective when things get stressful or when there's a demand or pressures on me. At the end of the day, it's our family, it's being a mother and a partner and seeing love all around." In that same article, Lilly also shared that her partner stayed at home with the kids, while she worked, which just emphasizes the way the family is not caught up on stereotypes or cultural expectations.