Romantic, Wholesome Celebrity Love Stories: Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and while the celebrity world is often full of drama, scandals, affairs, and heartbreak, there are still some couples who prove that true love exists, with stories worthy of a Hollywood movie. Here are some of the most wholesome:
The two ended up locking eyes across the parking lot once Colman left the store, but Raúl and his friend left before Colman was able to approach them. The star recalled during a 2024 appearance on The Graham Norton Show: “I get off the phone. They walk off down the street, but he keeps looking back, and I wave, but he just keeps going, and then I’m just dumbfounded, and I end up in a Blockbuster across the street.”
Unable to get the encounter off his mind, self-proclaimed “hopeless romantic” Colman decided to check out the Missed Connections section of Craiglist three days later, and on the second page, he saw an ad about himself from the mysterious stranger.
Colman had no doubt that the listing was about him because it described his haircut and the location to a T. In an even bigger twist of fate, Raúl had only posted the ad two hours before Colman got the urge to look.
Three days later, the two arranged to meet, and when they were still together at 4 a.m. the following morning, Colman realized it was serious. He shared: “I thought he was asleep — 4:00 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, and I said: ‘I think I love you and you’re about to change my life.’ And we’ve been together for almost 19 years.”
Suffice to say, he was right. Colman and Raúl have now been together for more than 20 years, and married in 2014. You can watch Colman recount their meet-cute in full below:
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2.
Jay Leno was around 25 years old when he first met his wife, Mavis Leno, at a local comedy club in 1976, with the two getting married four years later, in 1980. And while their story might be somewhat of a tearjerker, the unwavering commitment and devotion is still a pretty great example of true love.
In 2024, it was disclosed that Mavis had been diagnosed with an advanced form of dementia, and that Jay had been granted a conservatorship over their joint estate. He has also become Mavis’s primary caregiver amid her diagnosis, and recently opened up about their new way of life. For reference, Jay is now 75 years old, and Mavis is 79, and they will have been married for 46 years this November.
Discussing their day-to-day life, Jay shared his gratitude that he is able to afford a carer for when he is out of the house, adding that he always cooks Mavis and himself dinner once he comes home from work. He shared: “Making my wife laugh is still one of my primary things, and you figure out how to do it. The other night, we’re lying in bed, and Mavis says, it’s like 2 o’clock, and she says: ‘Honey, I love you.’ I said: ‘You’re having a nightmare, go back to bed,’ and she thought that was the funniest thing, she just couldn’t stop laughing. To me, that’s what’s fun: ‘Oh, I got a laugh out,’ I enjoy that. I try to come up with stupid jokes.”
Jay also shared his relief that Mavis still recognizes him, and added that he tries to protect her from being exposed to “depressing” things on TV, including the news. He said: “My thing is just to try to keep her mood constantly up and lively.”
When asked what his “biggest surprise” has been as a caregiver, he said: “Probably how much I enjoy it. Changing somebody is not the most romantic thing you can do, but you realize it doesn’t get more intimate than that if you still care for the person. I just find myself going: ‘OK, this is not that bad,’ and I enjoy going home. I don’t take the long way home and arrive late; I get home as soon as I can and I enjoy taking care of her and trying to come up with things she likes and things to make her laugh.”
3.
Matt Damon was an Oscar-winning Hollywood A-lister when he walked into a Miami bar back in 2003 and met Luciana Barroso, a divorced single mom, who was working as a bartender.
Recalling the moment he first saw his now-wife, Matt said during a 2011 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show: “I literally saw her across a crowded room, literally. Eight years and four kids later, that’s my life. I don’t know how else our paths would’ve crossed if that didn’t happen.”
Matt started to get hounded by fans in the bar, and he sought refuge behind it — where Luciana quickly put him to work. In a rare interview with Vogue Australia, she recalled: “He had started getting recognized and asked for pictures and autographs, and then it got kind of aggressive because people are drinking and stuff. So he came and hid behind the bar…[wanting to] just hang out back there and have a drink. He says: ‘Oh, I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you.’”
But Luciana didn’t have the time to be chatted up by a Hollywood star, instead telling him: “You can’t just be standing there!” Before long, Matt was making drinks and “made a ton of money in tips that night” because “everyone wanted to go and see him.”
“By the end of the night, he invited me to go out with his friends,” Luciana said. “But I was like: ‘I can’t, I have a four-year-old daughter, I’m not going anywhere’ … and that was one of the things he loved, that I had a daughter.”
Luciana’s young daughter didn’t deter then-32-year-old Matt in the slightest, and he and Luciana started dating — working around her childcare arrangements. They got married in 2005, and have welcomed three more daughters together, who often join him on the red carpet.
Reflecting on dating an A-list celebrity, Luciana said: “When you meet somebody that you have a connection with, that’s just the person that you have a connection with, all the other stuff — the movie-star part — wasn’t really a factor. It was just Matt, to me he’s just Matt.”
4.
And speaking of celebrities falling in love with “normies,” when hairstylist Jillian Fink saw a booking at her salon, Delux, under the name of established TV actor “Patrick Dempsey” back in 1994, she immediately wrote it off as a joke. So, when Patrick actually walked in for a haircut, she was pleasantly surprised. Per People, Jillian recalled: “I was shocked, but at the same time, I was happy because he was so cute.”
In true “slow burn” Hollywood rom-com fashion, both Patrick and Jillian were in relationships with other people at the time, but over the course of three years — and regular haircuts — Patrick eventually invited her over for a homemade meal at his place. It went so well, Jillian moved in just three months later.
The couple got married in an intimate farmhouse wedding on a family property in Maine in 1999, and now share three children. However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, with the pair being open about almost splitting for good in 2015 after their relationship hit a bump in the road.
In fact, Jillian even filed for divorce at the time, but they ultimately managed to repair their marriage through couples therapy. Speaking to People in the years since, Patrick said: “I wasn’t prepared to give up on her and she wasn’t either. We both wanted to fight for it.” Thankfully, the pair have been happily together ever since!
5.
Meanwhile, TV host Steve Harvey first met his now-wife, Marjorie Bridges, when she interrupted his comedy set by walking in late way back in 1990. But rather than be irritated by Marjorie’s disruption, Steve appeared to immediately fall in love.
Speaking during a 2018 appearance on The Steve Harvey Show, Marjorie recalled: “I was late, and I thought he was gonna give me the business because he got real quiet. He was just staring at me. I thought I was going to become part of the show. He finally realized: ‘Oh, I gotta say something.’ He was, like: ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know who this is, but I’m gonna marry her.'”
As with Patrick and Jillian, both Steve and Marjorie were unfortunately with other people at the time, and they eventually lost touch. But after Steve found himself single in 2005, he decided to reunite with Marjorie at the suggestion of his bodyguard. Recalling the moment that they reconnected to People in 2016, he said: “It was like being reborn. I messed up so many times in my life. She made all the difference. When you’re happy at home, you can make a lot of things happen.”
The pair finally wed in June 2007, and Steve later adopted Marjorie’s three children, while she is stepmom to his four kids from his previous marriages. You can watch them recounting their love story in full below:
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6.
As previously mentioned, the celebrity world is often dogged with affairs and scandals — and Shania Twain found this out the hard way when her husband of 15 years, Robert Lange, aka “Mutt,” cheated on her with her married best friend, Marie-Anne Thiébaud.
Shania was understandably devastated by this betrayal, with she and Mutt marrying in 1993. She learned of his affair with her “confidante” Marie-Anne in 2008 and they immediately separated — finalizing their divorce two years later. It’s worth noting that Shania did not publicly share the details of what happened in her marriage until 2015.
And if you’re wondering why such a heartbreaking story has earned a place on this list, it’s for the happy ending — and surprise plot twist — that came afterward. You see, amid the drama, Shania ended up falling for Marie-Anne’s husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, who had also suffered the pain of Marie-Anne and Mutt’s affair.
The two seemingly bonded over their horrific shared experience, and all’s well that ends well as Shania and Frédéric have been happily married since 2011.
7.
British actor Carey Mulligan and American-born British singer Marcus Mumford are another celebrity couple who reconnected after years apart, and their adorable meet-cute goes all the way back to their childhood.
The pair have previously revealed that they first met at a Christian youth summer camp when she was 12 years old and he was 10, with Carey recalling during a 2023 appearance on the Smartless podcast: “I wrote in my diary that he was the nicest, kindest person I’d ever met, and I gave him 9 1/2 out of 10. I also wrote in my diary that he definitely wasn’t boyfriend material. Not that I’d ever had a boyfriend at that time. But I decided that he was not it.”
Carey and Marcus remained pen pals for a few years after their meeting, but eventually lost touch. Then, they briefly found each other again on Facebook… Only to lose touch again when they both deactivated their accounts.
Finally, in 2011, Carey and Marcus were brought back into each other’s lives when they both worked on the movie Inside Llewyn Davis, and this time around, they weren’t going to let each other slip away again. In fact, Carey admitted that she joked to Marcus that they “probably should get married” after “destiny” brought them into each other’s lives so many times, and they ended up doing exactly that.
Marcus proposed later that same year, and the two wed in April 2012. They have since welcomed three children together, and very much appear to be living happily ever after.
8.
Actor Riz Ahmed and his author wife Fatima Farheen Mirza have the kind of meet-cute that hopeless romantics dream of, with the two first crossing paths when they fought over a plug socket in a New York City cafe in 2018 — just before his career skyrocketed.
Both Riz and Fatima had gone to the cafe to write, with Riz explaining during a 2021 appearance on The Tonight Show: “We just both sat down at the same table in a cafe, where we both turned up to write. We were both jostling over the same laptop plug points, like a very modern way of meeting.”
At the time, Riz was preparing for his role in Sound of Metal, which ultimately earned him his first Oscar nomination, with Riz saying of his fateful meeting with Fatima: “It’s weirdly one of the many things about preparing for this role that was so special. It just brought a lot of goodness into my life.”
The pair started dating soon after their meeting, and got engaged and married during COVID-19 lockdown. Riz opened up about his “corny” proposal during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where he revealed that they had a picnic in their local park before he made his move via a game of Scrabble. He shared: “So we were actually playing Scrabble and I did that corny thing where I stole all the correct letters up and spelled out ‘Will you marry me?’”
They got married soon after in a “super intimate” backyard ceremony in California, and in August 2025, Riz revealed that he and Fatima had quietly welcomed their first child together. You can watch Riz talking some more about his and Fatima’s relationship below:
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9.
Meanwhile, Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis met his now-wife Angela Jones when she was literally working at a Wizarding World of Harry Potter event at Universal Studios, Orlando in 2016, and Matthew was one of the VIPs in attendance.
Writing on her blog, Angela said: “I never believed in soul mates until we met,” with the two getting engaged within months of their first meeting. However, the fact that he lived in Britain and she in the United States made things tough at times.
“Not every day was sunshine and rainbows though,” Angela wrote. “We spent most of our relationship FaceTiming. We went days, weeks and months without being able to see each other. It was hard. Really, really, really hard. We decided that it was time to finally be together. And that’s how this story begins.”
Thankfully, they managed to overcome the distance, and the two got married in 2018 — with Matthew thought to have relocated to the US to be with her.
10.
Back in 2021, M*A*S*H and The West Wing actor Alan Alda went viral when the seriously wholesome way that he met his wife, Arlene Weiss, 70 years ago gained traction online.
As it happens, the two were both attending colleges in New York City in 1956, and were at a mutual friend’s dinner party when a rum cake fell on the floor. Alan and Arlene realized that they were meant to be together when they were the only two guests who didn’t hesitate to eat the cake, and got married a year later.
When their meet-cute went viral on X, Alan clarified that he already had his eye on Arlene before the cake incident. He tweeted: “We did eat the rum cake off the floor and were inseparable after that. But I was captivated by her even earlier in the meal when I heard her at the end of the table laughing at my jokes. She had me at Ha.”
Alan is now 90 and Arlene 92, and they remain happily married to this day.
11.
He was a British prince, she was an American TV actor: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s love story is definitely one that is worthy of the big screen.
While it is undeniable that Harry and Meghan’s romance has been somewhat tarnished by the way that she was treated by UK tabloids, as well as, allegedly, by the Royal Family itself, it’s undeniable that it has Hollywood-level roots. If you didn’t know, Harry first spotted his now-wife when he was scrolling on his secret Instagram account and saw her in a friend’s selfie, with the mutual friend going on to set them up on a blind date in London.
Added drama saw Harry get stuck in traffic and running into the building sweating as he turned up half an hour late for the date, which Meghan was very patient about. Thankfully, the rest of the rendezvous went perfectly. Due to Harry’s royal status, all of his and Meghan’s early dates took place in total secrecy, with the two bonding over cozy nights in before getting married in 2018.
As mentioned, the relationship has not been without struggle, and Harry and Meghan ultimately opted to leave the royal family in January 2020 due to how they were being treated, with the horrific vitriol seemingly pulling them closer together rather than tearing them apart. They now live a blissfully peaceful, drama-free life together in sunny Montecito, California, with their two children — a fairytale-worthy happily ever after!
12.
For better or for worse, there are plenty of examples of celebrity actors falling for each other while working on a movie together — but few are as wholesome as Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes, who realized when they were acting as a family on set that they didn’t want the acting to stop.
The two seriously hit it off when they were both cast in The Place Beyond the Pines back in 2011, where Ryan played a motorcycle stunt rider who resorts to bank robbery to support his lover, played by Eva, and their newborn baby.
Speaking to GQ magazine about this period in his life, Ryan said in 2023: “I wasn’t thinking about kids before I met her, but after I met Eva, I realized that I just didn’t want to have kids without her. There were moments on The Place Beyond the Pines where we were pretending to be a family, and I didn’t really want it to be pretend anymore.”
And Eva shared the same sentiment, separately telling Women’s Health in 2019 that motherhood “was the furthest thing from [her] mind” until she met Ryan. She added: “I mean, falling in love with him. Then it made sense for me to have…not kids, but his kids. It was very specific to him.”
Ryan and Eva are still happily loved up, and share two daughters: Esmeralda and Amada.
Do you have a favorite celebrity love story? Let me know in the comments below!