Celebs Who Married High School Sweethearts
Celebrity marriages don't have the greatest track record. They often start when two co-stars fall in love on the set, but they very rarely make it in the long run. Fortunately for some stars, they were able to avoid the pitfalls of a high-profile love connection (at least for a while), because they found love before they ever found fame. Here are the celebrities who married their high school sweethearts.
Eminem
Eminem aka Marshal Mathers' rap lyrics have always been a shockingly open book, particularly when it comes to his relationship with his ex-wife, Kim, who according to UPROXX, he met when they were young teenagers and he was standing on a table in a mutual friend's house, rapping LL Cool J's "I'm Bad." That probably should have been a warning for Kim, who aside from Eminem's mom, was one of the hardest-hit targets of the rapper's lyrical venom.
In "'97 Bonnie and Clyde," Eminem raps about taking his and Kim's daughter along while he disposes of Kim's dead body. In "Kim," he actually somehow goes darker, and fantasizes about stabbing Kim, her new husband, and his four-year-old son to death. So, it shouldn't be a shock that they aren't still together. Strangely, they actually tried to make it work twice. After their initial divorce in 2001, they reconnected briefly in 2006, and married again for four months. Though the troubled couple has been through a lot — Kim attempted suicide twice and Eminem struggled with an addiction to painkillers that nearly killed him — they managed to successfully co-parent. Together, they raised their biological daughter Hailie, as well as Kim's daughter from another relationship, Whitney, and also, Kim's niece, Alaina, who they adopted after Kim's sister was unable to care for her. So, is there a chance that the sparks could fly a third time?
"I would rather f*****g be on a coach flight with *NSYNC at the back of the plane in the last row in them seats that don't go back — just stuck there with the bathroom out of order. I would rather have a baby through my penis than get married again," Eminem said to Rolling Stone. What can we say? The guy's always had a way with words.
Robin Thicke and Paula Patton
As of this writing, Robin Thicke and Paula Patton are embroiled in a nasty child custody fight. Patton has accused Thicke of abuse, and Thicke hasn't done much but offer weak denials, and continue to smatter his Instagram with pics of his model girlfriend who is 22 years younger than him. But their relationship wasn't always such a mess.
According to E! News, the actress and the singer met in 1991 when they were just barely teenagers at an all-ages dance club. Patton was 15 and Thicke was 14. While they danced, he serenaded her with "Jungle Fever," because his knack for the kind of creepy subtlety he expressed later with "Blurred Lines" apparently hadn't kicked in yet. But he was hooked. "I knew she was special the night I met her. I was only 14, but she was already the most special girl," Thicke said. Of their first kiss, Patton told Glamour, "He sang Jodeci's "Forever My Lady" to me. He did a full-out R&B onstage performance in his dad's living room. Then he kissed me. It worked!" By most accounts, they had a pretty passionate relationship — Thicke once bragged to Essence about getting Patton "into double-digit orgasms as much as possible" — even though it took them until 2005 to finally tie the knot.
But by 2015, those ubiquitous irreconcilable differences won in the end, and their divorce was finalized. Thicke owned up to being responsible for the split, citing "a hundred different reasons," to Hot 97 (via E! News) "There's a long list... I changed, and I got a little too selfish, a little too greedy and little too full of myself," he also said. It seems sad, but if you think about it, a 24-year relationship in Hollywood is like ten lifetimes for normal people, so it could have been worse.
Snoop Dogg
Rapper Snoop dogg married his high school sweetheart, Shante Broadus in 1997. He was already a rap legend at that point, having appeared all over Dr. Dre's debut album, The Chronic, in 1992, and his own acclaimed freshman effort, Doggystyle, in 1993. But after more than ten years of superstardom, Snoop let the entertainment lifestyle go to his head. He was ready to walk out on his family and embrace the pimp life he'd always fantasized about. And that's not a euphemism. He literally went off and became a pimp.
"When I stepped away, that's when the pimpin' was really heavy. I was goin' to all the Players Balls," Snoop told Rolling Stone. He even claims he won the "Bishop Don Magic Juan Lifetime Achievement Award" after showing up to a Players Ball in Detroit with twelve women. In 2004, Snoop filed for divorce, and was estranged from his family for months before coming to his senses. "But I had enough. That pimping s**t was cool 'cause I needed to do it–it's in me; but I'm into the family, I'm into this now," he said. He softened that statement a little when he spoke to MTV about it (via The Daily News). "I understand that I need my wife and my kids in my life — so I threw the papers away. I don't want to get a divorce." Amazingly, Broadus let him come back. In an interview with Sister 2 Sister (via Bossip), she said she understood the pressure and temptations of being an entertainer. As of this writing, they're still going strong, but we have just one question. Did she let him keep that trophy?
Joey Fatone
Like Paula Patton and Robin Thicke, Joey Fatone and his wife, Kelly Baldwin Fatone, took over a decade to get married despite being on-and-off lovers for 14 years. "We did everything backward. We had a kid, we lived together, then we got married. We did everything completely reversed and it worked!" Fatone told People. But it wasn't always easy.
Joey hit the big time with *NSYNC almost immediately out of high school, which meant Kelly got to watch him become an object of desire for every teenage girl on the planet. Luckily, she had a great attitude about it. "It's funny — people go, 'Oh, my God, that girl's all over him,' and I'm like, 'You know what? If it made her night, great. Doesn't bother me.' Either you're a jealous person or you're not. We've been together so long that I have an 'open door' policy. I say, 'If something looks better to you, than there's the door," she also told People. The couple's understanding approach helped them weather years of cheating rumors, like during Joey's run on Dancing With The Stars when everyone assumed he was stepping out with his partner, Kym Johnson, and during the hype surrounding *NSYNC's one-time reunion at The 2013 MTV VMAs when reports actually surfaced that Joey left Kelly.
Still, the key to the couple's success seems to be a good sense of humor. When asked by CBS how they've kept the romance alive all these years, Fatone joked, "Traveling! When *NSYNC took a break and I stayed home, she was like 'Can you get out and go get a job and go do something? I feel like you're on top of me. Go do something!'" Looks like they won't be saying "bye bye bye" to each other anytime soon. (Sorry, we had to do it.)
Jon Bon Jovi
Jon Bon Jovi was already a rock megastar when he married Dorothea Hurley, who he met at at Sayreville War Memorial High School in New Jersey. In 1989, they got hitched at one of those Elvis impersonator wedding chapels in Las Vegas. It's the kind of moment that's usually the butt of a drunken joke — Britney Spears' 55-hour marriage to Jason Alexander ringing any bells? — but for Bon Jovi, it was the start of successful, long-lasting marriage.
"She's the glue. I'm the crazy visionary with all kinds of things flying, and the seams are all splitting. She's the one following me with the glue and the thread and needle, keeping it all together," Bon Jovi tells People. He also credits his ever-present backstage bride with helping him through his darkest times, like during a near mental breakdown at the height of his fame in 1991, and after Richie Sambora inexplicably left the band in 2013 and never came back. "It was a very, very difficult time that I haven't fully rebounded from yet but my wife has been phenomenal. Without her, I am not sure how I would have coped," Bon Jovi told The Mirror.
Hurley, who is the driving force behind the couple's philanthropic efforts, also told People that she feels the relationship is well-balanced. "Somehow it works. I think because we grow at the same rate. We grew equally and not in opposite directions." Sounds like their love definitely wasn't...bad medicine. Okay, we promise no more lyric puns. Maybe.
Solange Knowles
For a long time, Solange Knowles was tight-lipped about her marriage to Daniel Smith, her high school sweetheart who she married at 17-years-old after becoming pregnant with their son, Julez. Solange even moved to Moscow, Idaho, to be with Smith while he was in college, but the marriage still only lasted two years. After their split, Solange moved to LA where the rumor mill started to crank up, like with the suggestion that she left Smith for rapper, Lil' Wayne. But Knowles was quick to set the record straight. "That's absolutely not true. Yes, we know each other but I absolutely did not leave my husband for him," she told People in 2007. "I am no longer married, but I think it's very important not to dish details. We are friends and we co-parent our son. When he gets older I don't want him to read anything about me saying anything about his father or vice versa," she added.
Years later, she opened up a bit more to Harper's Bazaar. "Just going through a marriage and a divorce—which I essentially did by 21—will give you an insane amount of perspective on life." But she's also still giving props to Smith for being a great dad. "We co-parent really well. I'm able to say, 'I need to finish this album, can you step up and take care of the boy?'" Solange is now happily remarried to video director, Alan Ferguson, and we feel like they have a great shot at going the distance so long as he never picks a fight with her anywhere near an elevator.
Anthony Mackie
Remember how it never made any sense when you were little and your parents told you, "Oh, that's just because they like you," when someone was mean to you on the playground? Well, in Anthony Mackie's case, it must have been true, because in an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, he admitted his wife, Sheletta Chapital, was downright terrible to him when they met at 7 years old. "She was the meanest person in the world. She was an awful, awful child. She used to beat me up for my lunch money," The Avengers star revealed.
But something about her must have stuck with him, because 20 years later, after meeting by chance at a concert in 2009, they reconnected and have been together ever since. They got married in 2015 during a low-key beach ceremony in the Dominican Republic, according to Page Six, and they have three kids together. Not a whole lot else is known about their relationship and we're guessing that's because Mackie was reintroduced to that grade school wrath after that Late Late Show appearance.
Bono
Jon Bon Jovi may have taken a page out of Bono's book, because the U2 frontman first courted his wife, Ali Hewson, while they attended the Mount Temple Interdenominational School in Dublin in 1976. Bono told ET that his first big move was walking her to the bus. Ali, who is an admittedly "very private person," told More Magazine (via @U2) that it took years of him pursuing her before she gave him a shot. They married in 1982 when U2 was just starting to take off, and Ali was happy to take a backseat to the fame. "But I really don't have a big problem with my own identity, because I am a very private person, so I've always let Bono take the brunt of anything that was coming along. He is happy to do that; I am quite happy to make my own way around things," Hewson said.
Bono gives all the credit for their relationship success to Ali. "I married an extraordinary woman ... I hold on to her very tightly," he told Babble. And the fact that they share a passion for philanthropy probably helps, too. Bono's charitable efforts are well known, but Ali, who studied social science, politics and sociology, has been heavily involved with Greenpeace, Adi Roche's Chernobyl Children International, the ONE Campaign, as well as EDUN, the fashion line she created with Bono to encourage fair trade and production in African markets. Should we keep that list going, or do you already feel guilty enough that you and your significant other spend all weekend binge-watching HGTV?
Ron Howard
Ron Howard's wife, Cheryl Gay Alley, is not only the love of his life, she's also his "good luck charm." Speaking with Live Happy, Howard said he put Alley in his first movie, and she's been in every one ever since. Not only has Alley helped ensure the success of Howard's career on the screen, she acted as the logistical guru who coordinated the family's many relocations over the years, so they could remain together no matter where Howard was shooting. She even moved to London while pregnant with their son, Reed, while Howard worked on Willow. But the key to keeping it all together, according to Opie's wonder woman, was making time for each other.
Their daughter, actress Bryce Dallas Howard, also spoke with Live Happy, and she relayed this advice her mother gave her when she was about to have children of her own. "She said that when it comes to building a strong family, it's always important to prioritize the marriage. You have to be stable in your marriage and personal relationships before you can impart stability to your children," Dallas Howard said. Having tied the knot 42 years ago as of this writing, we'd say her advice is as reliable as it gets.
Misha Collins and Victoria Vantoch
Where Ron Howard and his wife's romance is basically the quintessential traditional love story, Supernatural actor, Misha Collins' tale of marital bliss is the complete opposite. His wife, journalist Victoria Vantoch, has published a book called The Threesome Handbook, and it's not satire. It is literally a how-to guide to bringing a third party into your bedroom. But before they got to be so adventurous, their relationship started out much more innocently.
When asked during a Q&A how he met his wife, Collins said it was in English class where he happened to be the only male student in the whole class. He wooed Vantoch with poetry, and then on a school trip to Boston, they got blackout drunk and forgot they gave each other hickies. So, OK, not that innocent. But their engagement story, also told through another Q&A, is something out of a sappy romance novel. On their 10-year dating anniversary, Collins presented Vantoch with a ring he made by hand, only to find out that Vantoch had also been secretly designing a ring for him, which she had planned on giving him the next day. Aww! So sweet, right? We wonder if they kept them on while doing research for Vantoch's book.
Ja Rule
In his memoir, Unruly: The Highs and Lows of Becoming a Man (via Time), Jeffrey "Ja Rule" Atkins' reveals that he first met his wife in 8th grade shop class. "I've known that woman for a long time. It's good to meet your soulmate, so to speak, at an early age, and go through life together, growing together. I watched her grow up, she watched me grow up," he writes. So, like Shante Broadus, Aisha Atkins fell in love at a very young age with a man who would go on to great success in the rap game. But also like Broadus, Aisha would find that the life of luxury provided by hip-hip comes with significant drawbacks, namely groupies and illegal offstage antics.
When Ja was sentenced to prison for two years for tax evasion and possession of a semi-automatic handgun, Aisha stood by him. She told TMZ, "Ja made sure ... that me and my kids wouldn't need anything as far as income goes. He planned well before he went in." When Ja was outed as a cheater in the scandalous memoir, Confessions Of A Video Vixen (via The A.V. Club), a claim he vehemently denies, Aisha stood by him. When asked by Wendy Williams about the infamous video vixen whose nickname was "Superhead," Aisha shut it right down by saying, "Child please, she ain't even up for discussion."
For Ja, all of that somehow translates to keeping it light. When asked by Hello Beautiful about the secret to the success of his marriage, he said, "You know, you gotta keep it freaky. Have a little fun, I think it's more about enjoying each other's company and having fun, and not taking it so seriously. It really is like I married my friend." Yeesh. With friends like him...right?