Strange Things About Candace Cameron Bure's Marriage

Candace Cameron Bure's marriage has endured the test of time. The "Fuller House" alum has been married to former hockey pro Valeri Bure since June 1996. While Candace and Valeri may look like the perfect couple, their marriage has quite a few strange aspects. For starters, Candace has suggested God is the main reason she and the Russian athlete are still together. Candace has also spilled details about her sex life while at the same time promoting female subservience in marriage.

Despite it all, they have put each other first and made it work. Valeri and Candace have a daughter, Natasha, and two sons, Lev and Maksim, who have helped the couple put things in perspective. When the pandemic exposed their communication issues, their kids reminded them of their priorities. "My children were the biggest influence in helping my husband and me work through it," Candace told Yahoo! Life in 2021. The Bure children are all adults now, but the couple is still as strong as ever.

Over the years and through their ups and downs, Candace and Valeri improved their communication and made time for each other. But she's the first to admit they're far from relationship experts. "I'm often asked for marriage advice. What's the secret? Lord knows I will never write a book about it because we are still learning every year, every day," she captioned an Instagram post celebrating their 25th anniversary. Interestingly, many of the weird things about the Bures seemingly have worked in their favor.

Candace Cameron Bure didn't intend to navigate life bowing down to a husband's wishes. But she ended up accepting the part to accommodate Valeri Bure's personality. "My husband is a natural born leader. I quickly learned that I had to find a way of honoring his take-charge personality and not get frustrated," she wrote in her 2013 book, "Balancing It All." Even though it didn't fit her own personality, she viewed putting Valeri's needs first as necessary.

"I am not a passive person, but I chose to fall into a more submissive role in our relationship because I wanted to do everything in my power to make my marriage and family work," she wrote. Candace later explained that her definition of submissiveness isn't negative. Instead, she was inspired by how the Bible instructs believers to act in a marriage. "It is meekness, it is not weakness. It is strength under control, it is bridled strength," she told HuffPost in 2014.

Candace may have chosen to bow down to Valeri's leadership, but that doesn't mean he never put her first. In 2005, he retired partly so that his wife could return to acting. "I was lying there thinking: Candace wants to go back to work. My kids are young. I want to spend as much time with them," he told the Star Tribune in 2009, explaining that he could have gone back to playing following back-to-back surgeries between 2005 and 2006. 

Candace Cameron and Valeri Bure could have called it quits a few times. But she thanks God — literally — that they didn't. The Bures are an exception in the entertainment biz, but they could have been the rule hadn't it been for their faith. "Really [it's] by the grace of God [we're still together], because you go through ups and downs," she told Us Weekly in April 2024. While Candace knows marriage requires love and respect, she believes her religious views gave her and Valeri the tools to overcome the obstacles.

"There's a lot of humility in marriage, let's just say that. You've got to put your pride aside," she said. That was far from the first time Candace credited God and her faith for the longevity of their union. When she celebrated her 20th anniversary in June 2016, she reiterated that their shared life has seen plenty of hurdles. Candace noted she and Valeri had a series of difficult years plagued by poor decisions and outcomes.

And once again, the Bures relied on their faith to show them the way. "God's Word and His grace see us through — striving to be the best of ourselves in Him. To God be the glory," she wrote on Facebook. Candace takes the same approach in all aspects of her life, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. "I live by faith in everything, in everything that I do," she told Fox News in 2020.

Candace Cameron Bure may be a devout Christian, but that doesn't mean she can't boast about her sex life. In September 2022, she opened up about the importance of sex in marriage. "Sex obviously is important and I hate that sex within marriage gets such a bad rep," she said on "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown" podcast. In her view, intimacy is one of God's ways of blessing a relationship. "I believe sex was given as a gift from God to be within the constraints of marriage and that is to be celebrated," she said.

Every once in a while, Candace makes sure to show that she and Valeri Bure keep the spark alive. In September 2020, she posted a photo to Instagram featuring Valeri with his hand on her chest (seen above). The photo drew backlash from some Christians who found it inappropriate. But she stood by it. "I love the fact that so many people had an opinion on it," she told Fox News, noting she didn't expect negative reactions because, to her, acknowledging that married couples have sex is normal.

Despite her openness about sex, Candace believes in modesty. When she competed on "Dancing with the Stars" in 2014, she vowed to stay away from revealing outfits. "My goal is not to be the sexy girl even though I can wear those things, I have the body to wear them. Sexy-classy, that's my thing," she told ABC's "The View."

Candace Cameron and Valeri Bure have withstood the ups and downs of their marriage with the help of God — and her busy schedule. Candace's work requires her to travel, and the distance helps them maintain an interest in each other. "We're apart a lot," she told Us Weekly in 2018. "Because I travel a lot, that's the secret! Because, you know, being away from each other makes the heart grow fonder."

Candace showed this was still true six years later. In May 2024, she shared a photo of Valeri while she was on a work trip. "Missing this one with all my travels. Can't wait to be in his arms soon," she captioned the Instagram post. Two months earlier, she also illustrated how distance plays an important part in their relationship. "These are the days!!! My man came to visit me this weekend while I film a movie," she captioned a March 2024 Instagram selfie of the two.

However, there is a limit to how much distance she can take. In December 2016, Candace announced she would step away from "The View" to make room in her schedule. The two seasons she spent flying between her home state of California and New York to film the talk show was hard on her. "I have to say I'm much more rested, I feel a little bit more sane, I feel like myself," she told E! News in 2017.

Candace Cameron Bure and Valeri Bure lead busy lives. Engrossed in their daily to-do lists, the two became used to brushing some issues under the rug. But the COVID-19 pandemic brought them all to light when preventative measures forced them to spend time together. "When you're all in a house together for [over a year], you have to start talking about the things you kind of avoid because of work and travel and all that stuff," she told Us Weekly in 2021. Candace and Valeri learned they had let issues accumulate.

And the pandemic gave them a chance to address them. "We just pushed through some of the things that were eating away at both of us," she said. The process wasn't always enjoyable. Egos were hurt and anger outbursts happened, but they cleared the way for problem-solving. "So, that's just what we did. And that's what marriage is really all about, but it was kind of thrown in your face during quarantine,'" she said.

While hard, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The pandemic made Candace and Valeri reevaluate their priorities and work schedules to make more time for each other. "We were like, '...This is either going to make us or break us.' And you know what? It's made us," she told Us Weekly in November 2020. And judging from the quarantine snippets shared to Instagram, it looks like she made the best of their time together.