In the confusing world of celebrities, there have been many relationship overlaps. From affairs that began on set to romances struck up in the midst of complicated divorces, several of our favorite celebrity couples were married to other people when they met.
Sometimes, true love just strikes like a bolt of lightning, changing everything you thought you once knew — including how you feel about the person to whom you’re actually married. It’s no one’s ideal story, given the requisite amount of heartbreak involved, but it happens nonetheless. In fact, a surprising number of our favorite celebrity couples first met each other when they were married to other people.
To be extra extra clear, just because these couples met while married doesn’t mean they did anything while married — at least, other than the ones who have publicly admitted it. But others on this list didn’t date for a long time after their first meeting, and only realized a romantic element to their relationship after they were no longer married.
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Ariana Grande & Ethan Slater
Image Credit: Steve Granitz/WireImage, Jenny Anderson/Getty Images News of Ariana Grande romance with Wicked co-star Ethan Slater broke when both were still married to other people.
The duo met on set while Grande was married to Dalton Gomez and Slater was wed to Lilly Jay, with whom he shares a son. Both have since split from their respective partners.
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Swizz Beatz & Alicia Keys
Image Credit: Anna Webber for Variety Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys first met as teenagers but when they reconnected two decades later, the producer and rapper was married to singer Mashonda, who he quickly split from in 2008. He and Keys married in 2010.
While the details are hazy, Mashonda did publicly accused Keys of “destroying a family” in a 2009 Twitter post.
“I feel that after [one] and a half years of you hiding this affair and acting like it [doesn’t] exist, that now is the time to confront it, since you talk so openly about it now… You have no idea how much pain I was caused because of this affair,” she wrote.
Mashonda later said she regretted the comments and has a close relationship with Keys and her ex-husband.
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Kayte Walsh & Kelsey Grammer
Image Credit: Chelsea Lauren/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fans watched the dramatic end to Kelsey Grammer and Camille Donatacci’s 13 year marriage on TV. The Frasier star suddenly split from the model in July 2010 after beginning an affair with English flight attendant Kayte Walsh while still married.
In a 2012 sit-down with Oprah, Walsh expressed remorse about how the romance began. “I’m not proud of the way we started out because he was in a marriage. I’m sorry. I have so many emotions. But you know, I fell in love. I don’t know how to word it, I don’t know how to put it into words,” Walsh admitted.
The couple have been married since 2011.
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Rita Wilson & Tom Hanks
Image Credit: Getty Images for The Recording Academy Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson first met on the set of ABC’s Bosom Buddies in 1981. At the time, Hanks was married to his college sweetheart Samantha Lewes. Wilson and Hanks remained friends and reconnected professionally on the set of 1985’s Volunteers, which is when Hanks realized there was something there with Wilson. “I asked Rita if it was the real thing for her, and it just couldn’t be denied,” he explained to GQ.
After Hanks’ divorce was finalized, he and Wilson started dating. The two went public with their relationship in 1986 and having been going strong since. They tied the knot in 1988 and celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary at the end of April 2023. The longterm couple has two kids together, Chet Hanks and Truman Hanks. Wilson also is a step-mom to Hanks’ older kids, Colin and Elizabeth, from his relationship with Lewes.
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Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds
Image Credit: Chris Polk/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds first met in 2010 while playing love interests in The Green Lantern. At the time, Reynolds was married to Scarlett Johansson and Lively was still dating Gossip Girl co-star Penn Badgley. A year later — when they maintain they were still just buddies — Reynolds’ marriage had fallen apart and so had her relationship, so they decided to set each other up with friends and go on a double date.
“We were buddies then. I remember it was funny because for about a year after Green Lantern had come and gone and we were both single,” Reynolds told Sirius XM. “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 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.”
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LeAnn Rimes & Eddie Cibrian
Image Credit: Fairchild Archive/Penske Media We all remember the scandal back in 2009 when Northern Lights co-stars LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian got together, despite both of them being married at the time. After word got out, they split from their partners and ended up marrying each other in 2011.
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Kim Kardashian & Kanye West
Image Credit: Lexie Moreland/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images Kim Kardashian was still in the process of divorcing Kris Humphries, who she was famously married to for just 72 days, when she began dating future husband Kanye West in 2012.
West and Kardashian married and welcomed four children before separating in 2021.
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Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt
Image Credit: Chelsea Lauren/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt met in the summer of 2004 on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the spy thriller on which they’ve since admitted they both fell in love — if not quite admitting to an affair. Of course, Pitt was famously married to Jennifer Aniston, who went on to file for divorce from Pitt in March 2005.
Just four months later, Pitt and Jolie were granted a spread in W magazine showing off their “domestic bliss,” with photos taken in March. Jolie had this to say of how they fell in love in 2006.
“Because of the film, we ended up being brought together to do all these crazy things, and I think we found this strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened,” she told Vogue. “I think a few months in I realized, ‘God, I can’t wait to get to work.’ … Anything we had to do with each other, we just found a lot of joy in it together and a lot of real teamwork. We just became kind of a pair.”
In 2019, Jolie and Pitt separated.
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Ryan Phillippe & Abbie Cornish
Image Credit: Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic via Getty Images Phillippe was still married to Reese Witherspoon when he met Abbie Cornish on the set of Stop-Loss. After separating from Witherspoon in 2006, Phillippe dated Cornish until 2010 but insists there was no overlap in the relationships.
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Jessica Simpson & Eric Johnson
Image Credit: John Aquino/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images So technically, when Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson met, Johnson was married but estranged from his first wife Keri Johnson. However, they officially divorced in 2010, marrying Simpson later that year.
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Anna Faris & Chris Pratt
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety. Anna Faris and Chris Pratt didn’t officially meet until they were both in Los Angeles in 2007 while filming the movie Take Me Home Tonight. At the time, Faris was still married to actor Ben Indra, and after her divorce, she and Pratt got together. They were married from 2009 until their official divorce in 2018.
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Jenna Dewan & Steve Kazee
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images In July 2021, Jenna Dewan revealed that she had actually met Steve Kazee nearly a decade prior, while still married to Channing Tatum.
She told The Knot that she and her mom saw Kazee when he starred in Once. “We cried our eyes out and fell in love with the show — in particular, the lead actor, Steve Kazee. We thought he was just so talented. And funnily enough, my mom had the biggest crush — she couldn’t stop saying, ‘He’s the cutest, so sensitive, so handsome.’ She just kept going on and on.”
She continued: “I was pushing her forward [at the stage door] to say hi, and Steve and I just had one of those eye-catching moments. It was very quick, but it struck us both. It was a moment. My mom and I told him what a great job he did and how it was such an amazing show, and that was it. We both went off into the night. But I never forgot the moment.”
Tatum and Dewan, who share a daughter, announced their separation in April 2018 before Dewan and Kazee went public with their romance in October of that year.
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Blake Shelton & Miranda Lambert
Image Credit: Charlie Williams/Everett Collection Blake Shelton met Miranda Lambert in 2005, when they were paired together for a performance at the CMT 100 Greater Duets concert. At the time, Shelton was married to Kanyette Williams, and Lambert was engaged to Jeff Allen McManus. But both stars say they knew almost immediately that they had a connection.
“I’ve never had that kind of experience with anybody,” Shelton later told People. “They paired me with Miranda, and we were on stage for rehearsal, and I don’t know, something just happened, and we both knew it. I was a married guy, you know? Standing up there and singing with somebody and going, ‘Man, this shouldn’t be happening.'”
In 2011, Lambert chimed in too: “I knew he was married. I knew better, like, this is off-limits.”
Shelton ultimately filed for divorce in 2015, and Lambert went on to marry former NYPD officer Brendan McLoughlin.
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Blake Shelton & Gwen Stefani
Image Credit: Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton met in a professional setting, as judges on NBC’s The Voice when Stefani joined the show in 2014. At the time, Shelton was married to Miranda Lambert and Stefani was married to Gavin Rossdale — but come 2015, but stars filed for divorce within a month of one another.
By October 2015, Stefani and Shelton were spotted all over LA looking awfully friendly, and they confirmed their relationship that November. Shelton says that it was the announcement he was separating from Lambert that initially brought him and Stefani closer together, since she was going through something similar.
“She didn’t tell me much, because we didn’t know each other at the time, but she said, ‘I’m going through something very similar to what you’re going through. I understand. And I hate it,'” Shelton explained to Billboard. “It went from that, to checking in on each other once a week through email — ‘This shit happened to me, what happened to you?’ — to maybe three times a week, then every day, to ‘Hey, here’s my phone number if you ever want to text.’ Next thing I know, I wake up and she’s all I care about, and I’m wondering if she feels the same about me.”
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Dwyane Wade & Gabrielle Union
Image Credit: Variety via Getty Images Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union met in 2007 when co-hosting a Super Bowl party, while Wade was married to Siohvaughn Funches and Union was a year past her divorce from ex Chris Howard. Wade went on to file for divorce later that year, but wasn’t seen in public with Union until July 2009.
In 2010, Wade’s ex Funches sued Union for “emotional distress,” claiming she had neglected and traumatized her children with Wade, Zaire and Zaya. Wade claimed this was a reaction to him filing for sole custody of their children and maintained Union’s status as a bystander throughout the dissolution of their marriage. Funches’ lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.
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Jennifer Garner & Ben Affleck
Image Credit: Star Max/IPx. Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck met in the summer of 2000 on the set of Pearl Harbor, when she was married to Scott Foley. But Affleck says it wasn’t until two years later, when they worked together on Daredevil that they fell in love — when Garner was still married to Foley, and Affleck was seriously dating Jennifer Lopez.
“We met on Pearl Harbor, which people hate, but we fell in love on Daredevil,” Affleck told Playboy. “By the way, she won most of the fights in the movie, which was a pretty good predictor of what would happen down the road — my wife, holding swords and beating the living s— out of me.”
In March 2003, Garner split from Foley a few months after a flirty TV appearance with Affleck. Foley maintained there had been no infidelity, and Affleck didn’t split from Lopez until the following year. Affleck and Garner’s first sighting as an item didn’t come until October 2004 — and the rest leading up to their 2017 split is history.
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Tori Spelling & Dean McDermott
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott met while filming 2005 Lifetime movie Mind Over Murder. And though Spelling was married to Charlie Shanian and McDermott was married to Mary Jane Eustace at the time, Spelling has since admitted that they had sex the first night they met.
When talking about McDermott’s infidelity in their own marriage in 2014, Spelling opened up about her own indiscretion.
“That’s how I met Dean,” Spelling said on reality show True Tori. “I mean, he was married. … We had sex the first night we met. It wasn’t like, ‘oh, just get your rocks off, have sex with someone just to have sex,’ you know?” she further explains. “It was a conscious decision, like, fell head over heels for you.”
She and McDermott both filed for divorce within the year, before marrying and going on to welcome five kids. The couple announced their separation in 2023.
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Julia Roberts & Daniel Moder
Image Credit: Rob Latour/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Julia Roberts and Daniel Moder met while shooting The Mexican in 2000 — when Moder was still married to makeup artist Vera Steimberg, and Roberts was dating Benjamin Bratt. Six months after their meeting, however, Moder moved out of his home with Roberts, and he married Roberts in the summer of 2002.
“He sorted his whole thing out, separate and apart from me,” Roberts told Oprah in 2003 of how they made the decision to date. “And I sorted my life out, separate and apart from him. I think that’s the only reason we were able to ultimately fall in love with each other and be together.”
Roberts and Moder recently celebrated 20 years of being together.
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John Travolta & Kelly Preston
Image Credit: Tyler Boye/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images John Travolta and Kelly Preston met in at a screen test for their upcoming film, 1989’s The Experts. Travolta has always said that his meeting Preston was love at first sight — but for Preston, who was married to Kevin Gage at the time, things are slightly more complicated. And Travolta wasn’t the first person whose arms she fell into after her divorce either, which took place in 1989: first, she moved in with George Clooney, then dated Charlie Sheen (and even was engaged to him) until 1990.
Travolta, however, swooped in the first second he had his chance, and proposed by New Year’s Eve 2001. Later asked by Andy Cohen whether Travolta was love at first sight for her, Preston said this.
“Well, I was not that happily married, let’s put it that way. I was really with the wrong person.”
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Megan Fox & Machine Gun Kelly
Image Credit: Penske Media via Getty Images Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly first met in March 2020 filming indie drama Midnight in the Switchgrass, when Fox says she felt an instant electricity with Kelly (born Colson Baker) despite her ongoing marriage to Brian Austin Green.
That summer, Green announched he and Fox were separating as Fox starred in Baker’s music video and made her red carpet debut with him at the AMAs. By that fall, Baker had met Green and Fox’s kids, and Green, to his credit, has maintained a neutral demeanor toward their relationship — aided by a sharp reminder from Fox that posting Instagram pictures with their kids to paint her as an absentee mom was not going to fly. She may have moved on from Green, but her kids will always be her #1.
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Billy Crudup & Claire Danes
Image Credit: Kristin Callahan/Everett Collection, Priscilla Grant/Everett Collection When Billy Crudup and Clare Danes met on the set of Stage Beauty, he was in an eight-year relationship with Mary-Louise Parker; when he left Parker in late 2003, she was seven months pregnant with their child. By 2004, Danes and Crudup were officially a couple, though they split two years later.
In 2013, Danes told Howard Stern that she hadn’t realized the magnitude of what she and Crudup had done, and credited it to part of her growing-up experience to have been with the 11-years-older Crudup.
“I didn’t know how to not do that,” she said. “I was just in love with him, and needed to explore that, and I was 24 … I didn’t quite know what those consequences would be. But it’s OK. I went through it.”
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Meg Ryan & Russell Crowe
Image Credit: Eli Winston/Everett Collection, Desiree Navarro/Everett Collection Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe met while filming 2000 thriller Proof of Life, when she was still married to soon-to-be ex Dennis Quaid. Their affair was tabloid fodder from day one, and Ryan has since opened up less about the experience of meeting Crowe and more of how media attention changed for her overnight, with Crowe also contending that Ryan had been unfairly judged for their relationship.
“It’s a real gift when you know you can’t ever really manage an image or a story and you stop caring,” Ryan told The New York Times in 2019. “I felt the effect, like I was the bad guy or whatever the story was. But I remember letting go of needing to correct anybody.”
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King Charles III & Queen Camilla
Image Credit: Jordan Pettitt, Pool/Getty Images The current reigning King and Queen of the United Kingdom might just be one of the most infamous affairs of the late 20th century.
Though the couple technically met when they were both single, they’re affair began while Charles was married to Princess Diana and Camilla was married to Andrew Parker Bowles. The affair rumors that persisted for years were eventually confirmed in 1994, leading to the end of both of the marriages.
Charles and Camilla went on to marry in 2005 and have been living together happily ever since.
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Amber Heard & Johnny Depp
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Heard was still married to her wife Tasya van Ree when she and Johnny Depp met on set of The Rum Diary in 2009. Though never officially married, Depp was in a 14 year relationship with Vanessa Paradis, with whom he shares his two kids. The couple announced their separation in 2012 and Depp soon moved on with Heard… and we all know how terribly that ended up.
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Antonio Banderas & Melanie Griffith
Image Credit: Tyler Boye/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images When Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith’s 20 year romance began on the set of Two Much, he was married to Ana Lenz, and she had married her ex-husband Don Johnson.
“It was very, very fast and very compulsive, but at the same time, we were tied at the time,” Banderas said of their relationship on set. “We tried as much as we could to be respectful. The couple divorced in 2015.
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Bruce Springsteen & Patti Scialfa
Image Credit: Stephen Lovekin/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa’s lasting romance began as a working relationship when Scialfa joined the Dancing in the Dark singer’s E Street Band in 1984, the same year Springsteen began dating his first wife Julianne Phillips.
The timeline remains blurry but Springsteen and Scialfa appear to have fallen in love during his 1988 tour and Springsteen separated from Phillips that same year.
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Donald Trump & Marla Maples
Image Credit: John Aquino/WWD via Getty Images Donald Trump’s marriage to Ivana Trump, with whom he shares his first three kids, Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric, fell apart in the early 1990s when he began an affair with model Marla Maples.
Maples and Trump later married in 1993 shortly after their daughter, Tiffany, was born. They split up in 1997.
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Michael Bolton & Nicolette Sheridan
Image Credit: Tyler Boye/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images Nicolette Sheridan was still legally married to Harry Hamlin when she began dating on-off partner Michael Bolton in 1992.
In 2019, Sheridan claimed she and Hamlin were separated when she started dating Bolton after Hamlin’s current wife, Lisa Rinna, claim the actress had an affair during an The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
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Will Chase & Debra Messing
Image Credit: Fairchild Archive/Penske Media via Getty Images Chase and Messing rather fittingly played characters who were having an affair on Smash and life imitated art when the two struck up a romance while Messing was still married to her husband of 10 years Daniel Zellman.
They officially revealed their separation in December 2011 but Messing insisted they were already estranged while living together when she and Chase began dating. Chase and Messing split in 2014.
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