Whether you’re finding your free-spiritedness with casual flings or you’re building something slow-yet-steamy, summer is the time when most people have love and happiness on their minds. While we can’t say that that’s the case for everyone, it’s certainly a common theme in many classic summer movies. People love ‘love’… Right? Not if you’re any of these stars.
These are the couples that proved love-at-first-sight isn’t always necessary for building a strong relationship. You don’t need to fall for each other right away in order to spend 30 years attached at the hip with someone. In fact, sometimes these relationships were born out of a spiteful energy between the two people. Sometimes, they were two friends who decided to take it to the next level. While some of the relationships have come and gone, while they were around these people all seemed like the perfect pairs.
We love hearing about couples that didn’t have a head-over-heels start because it reminds us that relationships aren’t always going to be fairy tales. Sometimes they’re slow, steady, and hard to navigate. They’re always worth it in the end though, especially if you’re these couples who have admitted that their relationships weren’t so fairytale-like as we might imagine.
15Anything But A Legendary Start: Chrissy Teigen And John Legend
John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are the cutest couple around. Their two kids are as adorable as they are, making this family not only super sweet but also super attractive. When John Legend met supermodel Chrissy Teigen, however, he didn’t break out the engagement ring right away. People Celebrity reports that Legend admits he didn’t love Teigen right away. They stress that, apparently, he told the Los Angeles Confidential once: “I wasn’t like, ‘This is the woman I’m going to marry’ from day one. For me, I’m the kind of person who needs to grow into that feeling. It was probably a couple of years in when I could already see us being together forever.”
His approach is one that many of us take, too — when we’re in a relationship with someone, we’re happy to take it slow.
Forever is a serious business, which requires some serious thought. By spending a few years together first, they were able to make sure that they were right for each other. This is one of the benefits to not just falling in love at first sight; all those hearts can cloud your vision, and you might miss some warning signs until it’s too late to get out.
14A Double Date Decided It For Blake Lively And Ryan Reynolds
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are two of the most gorgeous, hilarious, and worshippable people in the world right now. We absolutely love their senses of humor, awesome style, and everything they do to support their family. Their acting is always on point, and Blake Lively has become an official style icon for us. With such a beautiful family now, you’d think that the two of them fell all over each other when they first met, right? Wrong.
E! News repeats a story that Ryan Reynolds told Entertainment Weekly’s SiriusXM show. He said, “[Blake and I] were buddies then. I remember it was funny because for about a year after Green Lantern had come and gone and all that stuff we were both single. We went on a double date. She was on a date with another guy and I was on a date with another girl. That was the most awkward date for their respective probably because we were just like fireworks coming across. It was weird at first but we were buddies for a long time. I think it’s the best way to have a relationship is to start as friends.” We agree, Ryan.
Looks like playing love interests doesn’t guarantee the two of you will fall in love… At least, not right away.
13It Wasn’t Love For This O.C. Couple: Morena Baccarin And Ben McKenzie
These two cuties might have gotten married semi-recently, but they’ve known each other for a long time. At least, Morena Baccarin has known Ben McKenzie for a long time. This is one of those tragic stories where there was some attraction at first on Baccarin’s part, but McKenzie squashed it and put their meeting out of his mind. According to People Celebrity, Morena Baccarin confided to James Corden this wild story: “I had to remind him [we’d met before],” she says.
She also mentions how she had gone and introduced herself to him back when they first played together on The O.C.
She says: “he was just like, ‘Hi.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, well, I’m gonna keep on going then.’ And then when I got on Gotham, I told him that story, and he was like, ‘No! What kind of an idiot would do that?’”
According to People, she concludes by saying: “he was a 20-year-old hotshot who’d just gotten his first great job and he was all that. So, I tell him, it’s his fault he missed me in my prime. He could have had this a lot sooner.” We’re sure McKenzie is still kicking himself for missing out on so many other years of happiness!
12Rita Ora And Calvin Harris Started Things With A Fiery Fling
Calvin Harris seems to have a thing for tall, blonde, and outspoken. After hearing about all the stuff that happened with Taylor Swift, it doesn’t surprise us at all that he and Rita Ora began their relationship with a Twitter feud. Glamour Magazine gave us the details, which clarified that the fight was for a good reason. Glamour says that initially Rita Ora was supposed to take on the song Call My Name, which ended up being turned into a huge hit by Cheryl Cole. While they didn’t go into the exact argument, it was very heated and very coarse. Rita Ora confirms with Glamour that that wasn’t the extent of her’s and Harris’s relationship though.
In fact, quite the opposite!
Ora told Glamour, “we never really liked each other in the beginning… Then after that, it just kind of happened really. It was backstage at a thing when we first met and it went from there”. While the couple didn’t last too long, they definitely made it worthwhile. Not to mention how it’s good that Rita Ora ended up getting something good from Calvin Harris, even if she didn’t get the song she wanted. Good news for all you Twitter fighters out there; good things can come from a feud.
11Gabrielle Union Hesitated To Commit To Hero, Dwayne Wade
So many celebrity relationships seem to start while one of them is already in a relationship with someone else. Is that a pitfall just in the world of celebrities? We have trouble securing a relationship to start with, let alone finding an alternative one during the course of it. Perhaps that’s just the way life goes for the intelligent, entrepreneurial, gorgeous woman known as Gabrielle Union. People Celebrity repeats the meet-cute (or meet-ugly, in this case) that Union told James Corden about, “at the time he wasn’t even drinking. So it was like sober guy in the bar, which is a little lurk-y. When I first saw him, he was just watching us from up above and we were down below”.
However, that wasn’t the only reason Union was hesitant.
She told Corden, “I had a boyfriend when I met him. And Dwyane is a bit younger than me, so it felt like he was 12. He was super shy and quiet”. Luckily, People Celebrity states Union took her good friend Patti LaBelle’s advice and dropped the “zero” Union was dating, only to get her “hero”, Dwayne Wade. The two seem happy in all the pictures they have together, so we’re sure that it was worth it in the end. Hopefully, he’s less lurk-y now, though.
10Justin Timberlake And Jessica Biel Did Things “The Old-Fashioned Way”
Some old fashioned traits we’re glad to see disappear. Others, like how Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel started their relationship, can definitely stick around. While you might love or hate Justin Timberlake (there’s not a lot of middle ground with this guy), Glamour Magazine reports that he took a more reserved approach to starting his and Jessica Biel’s relationship.
Justin told Glamour, “there was nothing starry about the way we got together… I did it the old-fashioned way — by telephone. That’s something I learned from both my stepdad and my grandfather — that there is a thing called chivalry and it doesn’t have to die with the birth of the Internet. The way I see it, if you’re asking a girl out on a date, it’s only right to do it in a way that she can hear your voice.” He’s not wrong.
While he goes on to mention to Glamour how he “had to be pretty persistent in order to get her to say yes,” (no means NO, dude!) we’re glad that the two of them did end up together. While it wasn’t the dramatic romance and over-the-top love that some Hollywood couples experienced, it’s nice to know that even the stars start things off with a phone call.
9First Kiss, But Last Potential Partnership: Mila Kunis And Ashton Kutcher
People reminds us that these two actually had 2 “first” moments of attraction: one when they were on That 70s Show, and another much later when they were well-established adults. Kutcher is adamant, however, that that first one shouldn’t count.
He tells People Mag, “It was really weird. I was like, ‘Isn’t this illegal?’ It was really awkward.”
“She was 14! She was like my little sister,” and Kunis agrees.
Kutcher goes on to mention how, “[Mila] has a journal, like a diary of when she was a kid that she wrote … she thought I was cute. At first, I think she thought that I was good looking. Shortly thereafter, I was just annoying to her because I was like a big brother.” Well, with that age gap when they were on the TV show, it is likely that the relationship would feel more sibling-like. People’s article goes on to discuss how they re-met when they were adults, but the sparks were a little different.
Kutcher admits to People, “She’s like, ‘You’re not ready to be in a relationship’ and [I was] like, ‘I”m not ready to be in a relationship’”. That’s all changed now, though, as People reminds us: they were married back in 2015 and have a couple kids together. If that’s not in love, we don’t know what is!
8Olivia Wilde And Jason Sudeikis Were Brought Together By A Funny Circumstance
People’s giving us all the hot gossip when it comes to celebrity relationships, which we’ve compiled here in one easy list. An article they released back in 2017 features Jason Sudeikis sitting down and discussing his partnership with Olivia Wilde to Stephen Colbert. Outside of the typical Colbert jokes, the conversation actually had some great information about it regarding how the two of them got started.
People reports that Sudeikis said to Colbert, “I met her at a finale party for SNL… I actually came off looking a little cooler than I really am because I had heard through the grapevine, through mutual friends who weren’t exactly her best girlfriends, who would report back, ‘Oh you know, I think she’s dating someone,’ so I didn’t make any moves. I was just very, very busy with other things. And next thing you know, I stopped being busy, she stopped dating someone, and then it was off to the races.”
This just shows that patience is the best policy. While there might have been some inkling that something special was there, it wasn’t until they started dating a while after this story that the two of them figured out just how special it was.
7Some Fall In Love On Set, But Kate Mara And Jamie Bell Fell In Love After
You’d recognize these two from many different pieces of media, but most likely you know them from the movie The Fantastic Four. While People has given us a timeline of their relationship, as well as insights into their marriage, what keeps this couple happy isn’t exactly what we’re curious about right now. It’s not the outcome of the meet-cute that we want to know… It’s the meet-cute itself. In the case of Kate Mara and Jamie Bell, they definitely didn’t fall in love at first sight.
Kate Mara is on record as telling Andy Cohen, host of ‘Watch What Happens L!ve With Andy Cohen’, that she and Bell actually didn’t meet through ‘Fantastic Four’.
“We met like ten years before, doing a screen test together, and we had to kiss,” she says, “I had to kiss many guys that day for the screen test and Jamie Bell took the…” she trails off before finishing, implying that he took the cake. None of those faux-romantic feelings bubbled up during Fantastic Four either, she tells Cohen, but she reveals, “we fell in love on the press tour”. That makes Andy Cohen happy to hear, which makes us think that maybe that man played secret matchmaker… Or at least made them sit together long enough!
6There Was A Ten Year Gap In Lauren Conrad And William Tell’s Love
If you thought Mila Kunis at 14 was young, Lauren Conrad’s story of how she met William Tell might just rival it. According to US Weekly, Lauren Conrad wrote a tell-all blog post that consisted of 25 fun facts about her. The 25th point on this blog post was something everyone had been wondering: how did she and her husband meet? The way Lauren tells it, “I met my husband when I was 16 and sitting on stage at one of his concerts.” Yes, while William Tell is an entertainment lawyer now, as US Weekly reports, he once played in a band called Something Corporate.
So, how did they get from a rockstar-and-fan relationship to being a married couple? In the course of the ten years between them meeting and getting hitched, life went on as normal for the two successful stars. The romance picked up when a friend decided that each of them needed a little bit of love. US Weekly reports that Conrad wrote in her blog post, “ten years [after that concert] we were set up on a blind date.” The US Weekly article goes on to reveal that they’re incredibly happy in their relationship, proving that fate has strange ways of working.
5Goldie Hawn And Kurt Russell Had To Wait
Would you be surprised if we said that Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, two people who are seldom referred to separately, were once hesitant to start anything with each other? Daily Mail outlined their relationship in an article back in 2012. The two actors had known each other through various movie sets but never entertained anything other than fantasies.
DailyMail reports that Goldie Hawn says she: “was 21 and he was 16 and I thought he was adorable but he was much too young. And then years later we met up again and I liked him and I remembered that I liked him very much when I first met him. But we both said we would never go out with another actor so it just shows you never can tell.”
Seems pretty basic, but maybe basic is best.
After all, when DailyMail asked them about how they’ve sustained this relationship, Hawn said: “We’ve been together for 29 years now and I think if two people want to make it work, you make it work but if one doesn’t, then you’re sunk… I feel very honored that this happened. But you do have to put your time in.” Wise words, Goldie. Things will work out by themselves, but to sustain a relationship you really do need to work.
4‘Life Partners’ Inspired Adam Brody And Leighton Meester To Become Life Partners
Not sure who these two are? Let us jog your memory with a hint: The O.C.; Gossip Girl; guilty pleasure teen television dramas. You’d recognize these two from the aforementioned shows, and we guarantee that this relationship isn’t a crossover episode. These two actors are incredibly private, which is why it’s so hard to track down information about them.
However, we found that Fame 10 had reported their intriguing backstory: “Their first real encounter with each other was on the set of The Oranges, a 2011 independent film, but at that time Meester was dating someone else. It’s unclear when exactly the two started dating, but they decided to go public with it in early 2013 and were spotted out and about on various dates.”
With two years in between their meeting and their dating, we’re willing to bet that the beginning of their relationship wasn’t exactly smooth sailing…. And definitely wasn’t love at first sight! Luckily, the two of them did end up getting together, and Fame 10 goes on to say that it was the movie Life Partners which (might) have had something to do with it. The movie and their dating happened around the same time, after all!
3Will Smith And Jada Pinkett Smith Know The Value In Being Friends First
These are two of the most well-known people in Hollywood. Their names are household staples, even more so than Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; more than Bill Nye; maybe even more well known than Barack and Michelle Obama. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air gave so many of us comfort, joy, and happiness when we were growing up. The culture imbued in the show made it welcoming and accessible for everyone, one of the first (we believe) to really truly do that.
After school was never the same when ‘Fresh Prince’ started airing, just like how Will Smith’s life was never the same after meeting Jada.
Jada, however, has a different opinion. People Celebrity reports that she said in an interview with Your Tango, “after we had known each other for many years, we went out for dinner one night and I saw that he had grown from this lanky kid to this really responsible man. We started courting each other and our friendship turned into romance.” One night really can change everything, even after knowing someone for ages. We’re certainly happy the two of the two of them decided to give it a shot! They were always an absolute power couple, both publicly and in the family zone.
2These Ex-Pen Pals Reconnected And Found Love: Carey Mulligan And Marcus Mumford
Marcus Mumford (yes, the Mumford and Sons “heartthrob” who’s wooed many a teenage girl with his singer-songwriter folk-esque sensibilities) married Carey Mulligan back in 2012, according to People Celebrity. This was a relatively surprising thing, as it happened quite quickly after they first announced they were dating. Another private couple, Carey Mulligan said in an interview with The Guardian that “I don’t have a public persona. And when you go on [talk shows], you have to present a personality, you have to tell the anecdotes, whatever, and I can’t really.”
This might be why we know so little about the two of them. However, we do know (thanks to a report that Bustle wrote up) that they wrote letters to each other as kids. Bustle says they were pen pals, meeting each other through a classic summer-church-camp connection. The friendship didn’t grow to be more than that until they ended up reconnecting later in life, dealing with respective breakups, and getting together in a romantic capacity. The biggest thing Mulligan will say to The Guardian regarding their relationship is, “I think I’m more settled and more secure than I’ve probably ever been, and more confident and excited about the work choices that I make.” At least we know they’re happy, even if their past is a little shrouded in mystery.
1Brangelina Had A Questionable Start
This power couple had reached a deity-level status in the world of celebrities when they decided to split up. Now that the divorce is definitely happening (at least, according to The Sun, which says that everything has been finalized in an amicable way), we’re having to come to terms with the fact that these two are no longer going to be our staple red carpet couple. It’s a tragedy, and an end of an era, but it’s probably the best choice for the family. Now is the time to reminisce about the good days they had, which actually started without a bit of love at first sight. At least, according to Glamour Magazine!
Glamour says that when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie first met on the set of ‘Mr. And Mrs. Smith’, Brad was still dating Jennifer Aniston.
Maybe that’s why Glamour was careful to report that Angelina said: “I think we were the last two people who were looking for a relationship.” Nobody stole anyone away from anyone else. It’s only taken 10 years for that rumor to dissolve, so let’s not bring it back. Jolie goes on to tell Glamour, “I certainly wasn’t… I think a few months in I realized, ‘God, I can’t wait to get to work.’ And it took until, really, the end of the shoot for us, I think, to realize that it might mean something more than we’d earlier allowed ourselves to believe”. Even for the biggest stars, it can take months before realizing there might be some chemistry. They say actors are observant, but sometimes it’s hard to tell when love is staring you right in the face.
