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    Inside Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale’s Private Romance

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    Watch: Tony Awards 2025: See the Biggest Stars on the Red Carpet!

    Since Bobby Cannavale does, indeed, have legs, he may have been kicking himself for missing partner Rose Byrne‘s win for Best Female Actor – Musical/Comedy at January’s Golden Globes.  

    Though the reason for his absence was rather, uh, wild.

    “I want to thank my husband, Bobby Cannavale,” the If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You star said while accepting her trophy. “He couldn’t be here because we’re getting a bearded dragon, and he went to a reptile expo in New Jersey.”

    It was a plan hatched by their sons Rocco, 10, and Rafael, 8. 

    “He can’t come, which is such a bummer,” the actress said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon ahead of the ceremony, explaining why brother George Byrne would serve as her plus-one.

    And though Cannavale was on hand to watch Byrne vie for her first Academy Award in March and will presumably join her at the Tony Awards June 7, where she’ll face Fallen Angels costar Kelli O’Hara along with Carrie Coon, Susannah Flood and Lesley Manville in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play category, this past winter he had a pressing engagement on the calendar.

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    The reptile expo “is the place to go,” Byrne detailed to Jimmy Fallon, noting it’d be a “parent fail” if they didn’t follow through on their promise to secure Benny Blue the Bearded Dragon. 

    “I love that guy,” Jake Cannavale, Cannavale’s son with ex-wife Jenny Lumet, told E! News in March of the new addition. “It’s funny because you know my dad hated pets growing up. And now he’s being a dad again, and everything sort of has changed.” 

    Though one status has remain consistent. 

    Cannavale and Byrne have taken to using the terms husband and wife rather colloquially some 14 years into their romance, and a decade after Byrne began wearing a rather sparkly ring on her left hand. 

    “I hate all the other words! It’s just easier to say ‘husband and wife,'” Cannavale explained to Vulturein January 2020. “‘Boyfriend and girlfriend’ feels so young. ‘Partner’ feels so sterile.”

    Though Byrne wasn’t totally opposed to one unstuffy suggestion, joking, “My lover, Bobby.” 

    They’d been planning to wed, she noted, “and then another baby, and then—”

    Bottom line, Cannavale summed up, “Who gives a s–t. It’s just funny what people care about.”

    Scott Kowalchyk/CBS

    And though the Cuban-Italian New Jersey native and the Australian actress would describe themselves as decidedly private—”It’s way more interesting for other people than it is for us,” he told Vulture of their romance—fans have been invested in their journey from the beginning.

    Introduced by mutual friends in 2012 when Byrne, now 46, was wrapping her five-season run in the legal psychodrama Damages, “the chemistry between them, it’s just so remarkable,” her costar Glenn Close told Vanity Fair in 2019. Not to mention, “they’re both kind of universally loved.”

    Soon they were teaming up for both business and pleasure, playing a married couple in the 2014 indie Adult Beginners, co-starring in a remake of Annie that same year, portraying villains in 2015 comedy Spy and finally taking to the stage mere blocks from their house in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill for Simon Stone‘s adaption of Euripides’ tragedy Medea. 

    Despite the dicey material, the two maintain a burning desire to play off one another more frequently. 

    “It’s hard,” Byrne told Vulture of finding the right opportunities. “You have two parents not putting kids to bed. That’s the biggest part of the decision.”

    But when it works…

    At this point, “We’ve worked together in TV and film,” the 56-year-old told Us Weekly in October of making a cameo on her Apple TV+ series Platonic. “We have done a play together and we’ve made commercials together. It’s nice and it’s unusual to get to go to work together in any capacity—in any profession. We’re parents of small children and it’s nice to be able to go to work together and the kids know where we are. We’re together. It’s good and just a family band.”

    Though, admittedly, there are times they’re not convinced everyone in their household is in perfect harmony. 

    “We hear them talking about us in the room,” Cannavale revealed to Stephen Colbert during a January 2020 appearance on The Late Show. “Like, in the morning before we come in. You know, the 4-year-old helps the 2-year-old out of the sleep sack so he can climb out of the crib. He pulls him out.”

    David Fisher/Shutterstock

    In other words, “They’re conspiring,” he continued. “And it sounds like they’re upset about something.”

    Their eldest is “very sensitive,” Cannavale added, while his little brother has earned the nickname Seal Team 6 “because he’s crazy and he’s a killer.”

    A particularly brute one at that. 

    After a stint in Toronto, where Byrne was portraying Gloria Steinem in the FX miniseries Mrs. America, the family was packing for their return to NYC “and we had this big moving box,” Cannavale detailed. Rocco climbed in and attempted to keep his brother out, “So, Rafa grabbed him by the hair and he pulled him down with the box. Pulled him out by the hair and crawled in.”

    Theirs is a particularly ordinary existence, with Cannavale taking on the role of family planner while Byrne is “a little bit more moment to moment,” she admitted to Vulture. “That’s why we’re a good yin and yang.”

    But they have no issue acting as unmistakably dysfunctional couples. 

    Joe Schildhorn/BFA/REX/Shutterstock

    Because no doubt, the Emmy winner is her favorite co-star. 

    “He is one of a kind, man!” she gushed to In Style in 2017. “He’s endlessly interesting and entertaining. When something is special, it’s hard to articulate it, but I feel really lucky.” 

    Same, same for Cannavale. 

    “Rose is my favorite actor on the planet,” he stressed to Us Weekly. “I’m always surprised and amazed at her work. The different qualities that she brings to all these characters—I never see her the same way twice. I would like to show up for her—unequivocally—for anything that she’s a part of.”

    You know, as long as there’s not a bearded dragon to fetch. 

    “It’s going well,” Byrne told Extra after scooping up her trophy. “We’ve got the guy. He’s really cute and he’s in the house.”

    “Bobby is doing God’s work,” she added. “This is easy.”

    Their relationship is the stuff of dreams as well. Though they’re not the only ones sharing the key to long-lasting partnerships. 

    Instagram/Mariska Hargitay

    Mariska Hargitay & Peter Hermann”I never thought that I would laugh this much in my marriage. That is such a fundamental ingredient of who you are, this insistence on joy,” Hermann detailed to his bride of their partnership of over 20 years in Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue‘s 2020 book What Makes a Marriage Last. “And I think what sustains our marriage is that I know you love me in spite of who I am, and that is the definition of grace.”Seeking out that happiness is key. Even after a particularly robust argument, “One of us will test the waters with a joke—about the very thing we were fighting about,” Herman shared of life with the Law & Order: SVU star. “It’s like one of us says, ‘I’m not saying I was wrong, and I’m not still insisting I was entirely right, but can we at least inch our way back toward the place where we caught at stuff together?’ Once that happens, it’s a pretty good sign that things are on their way to getting patched up.”

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    Chip Gaines & Joanna GainesThey’ve avoided need for any major renovation by sticking to the same advice they got in premarital counseling ahead of their 2003 vows. Even five kids in, Tuesday date nights are a must and they’ve held off on purchasing a TV, instead finding other ways to connect. But if Chip were to offer any tip to follow, it’d be to pursue the person you love “like a hornet.” Some two decades in, he said, he still feels like the guy hoping to get a second date. “I’m not saying she’d never cheat on me,” he explained, “but it’s not going to be because I never told her I loved her or because I didn’t send her flowers or I forgot our anniversary.” 

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    Kyra Sedgwick & Kevin Bacon”My first piece of advice is not to take advice from celebrities,” Bacon joked of his 36-year union. It’s as succinct as their other go-to, “Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty,” a phrase developed specifically to end any further chatter about their marriage. Truthfully, though, they make it a point not to let arguments linger, rarely digging in for the sake of the victory. “Honestly, we don’t like to fight, so when we actually are in an argument, we’re both looking for a solution,” The Closer actress explained to Thomas and Donahue. “For the most part we’re struggling to get back to everything being okay, because it sucks to fight.” Because, when it comes down to it, she continued, “There is no Plan B. No matter what, we want to work it out.”

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    Michael J. Fox & Tracy PollanOver 37 years into marriage, the actors have mastered the art of fighting fair. “Tracy and I don’t pick scabs,” explained the Family Ties alum. “In some marriages, people look at their partner and see vulnerability and they just can’t help but go after that vulnerability, like it’s a sport or something. We don’t do that.” That’s not to say they don’t have arguments. “If I’ve said something stupid, I have the tendency to want to take it back and make it all okay,” he said. “But that doesn’t really work.” Instead, he follows her lead and tries to give her space. She, in turn, offers up understanding: “Sometimes you just have to say to yourself, ‘You know what? He said something schmucky and it made me feel bad. But he’s a good person and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t realize that what he said hurt my feelings.'” 

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    Jamie Lee Curtis & Christopher Guest”He still makes me laugh more than any human being,” Curtis said about the Waiting for Guffman director on Today in December 2024, ahead of the couple’s 40th wedding anniversary, adding jokingly, “and I’m sure there’s something about me that he likes. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure there’s something.”

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    Neil Patrick Harris & David Burtka”I think one of the things that has kept us together all of these years is that we both define relationships as something that’s relatively indefinable,” the How I Met Your Mother alum said. Through 21 years of career shifts (actor-chef Burtka released his cookbook Life Is a Party in 2019), parenting twins Gideon and Harper and dealing with tough times, “Marriage never stays the same,” explained Harris. “When you have sex with the same person over and over, it gets redundant, and so you try different things. Then one day you don’t like each other, and suddenly you’re not attracted to each other, so you have to figure out how to be reattracted to them—but in a different way because you’re aging.”Eventually, he continued, you find yourself more attracted to their soul. And then their body again. “It all keeps morphing,” he noted. “So in a weird way, we keep falling in love with each other in different ways, over and over.”

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    Melissa McCarthy & Ben FalconeAppropriately, the comic actors believe their funniness gives them life. And not just in their 19-year union itself. “Whenever we have a good laugh,” noted the Can You Ever Forgive Me? actress, “especially a crazy one, when you’re like, Oh, my God, and you’re almost dizzy—we always assign it a specific amount of time that it added to our lives. And I’m always adding it up. I’ll say, ‘Okay, that was like two months—I just got two more months to live!'”They put a time limit on disagreements as well. Citing the oft-repeated don’t go to bed angry rule, Falcone, said, “I tried it once, and I realized that in the morning I had forgotten what I was mad about. You’re not getting any answers if you’re parsing out an argument when everybody is tired and possibly had a drink or two. I’ve never had the thing where you’re having an argument at ten o’clock at night, and then you say, ‘Well, that was good. I’m glad we got to the bottom of that. We agree. Truce signed.'”

    Christopher Polk/Variety/Shutterstock

    Ted Danson & Mary SteenburgenEach having wed before they found their way to the other in 1995, they not only had to navigate a marriage, but life as step-parents to two children apiece. “There is no book that tells you how to do it, so the one thing I figured out right away is that they already have a mom—and it’s not me. So what did they need from me?” the Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist actor recalled. “That’s when I realized that everybody needs a cheerleader, right? There’s never too many of those in your life, so that’s what I’ll be. I never set their boundaries, disciplined them, or tried to teach them right from wrong. They have parents who do that.”The Cheers alum agreed with her stance wholeheartedly. “I think that’s really wise, to offer yourself as a friend,” he said. “‘I’m not going to discipline you and I’m not going to judge you. What I’m going to do is hang out with you and be there for you.’ And that’s what you have to do: absolutely, genuinely be there.” 

    Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for EJAF

    Elton John & David FurnishThe moment same-sex civil unions were legalized in Britain, the music icon and the Canadian ad exec were joined together in a Dec. 21, 2005 ceremony. They repeated the process on the exact same day nine years later once they were able to legally wed. And yet the anniversary they recognize is their unexpected meeting during a 1993 weekend dinner party at the singer’s Windsor, England flat, his friend having set the guest list.Every Saturday, no matter where they are in the world, together or apart, the two pen a handwritten note to each other, by the authors’ count, some 1,352 letters in all. “There’s something very spiritual and real about handwriting,” explains Furnish, “and the cards are a chance to reflect on the week that’s passed and talk about the week that’s coming up.” Agreed the five-time Grammy winner, “It’s part of the success, I think, of a lasting relationship. Communication is the most important thing.” 

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    Dr. Mehmet Oz & Lisa OzHaving literally Secreted their 40-year marriage into existence (“Six months before I met him, I had these recurring dreams about this person I was going to marry,”) they make sure their union has remained front-and-center even as their entire existence has shifted. “Marriage is a priority for both of us. And that means that we act on that and refocus when we’ve lost sight of the ball,” she said. If the surgeon could prescribe one piece of advice, it would be to place that bond above all else. “The bottom line is this: I would do anything for her. Climb any mountain, take any bullet—in the chest, too, by the way. I might do things that justifiably make her really angry at me, but I would never let anything block me from delivering my love to her,” he swore. If you appreciate how valuable marriage is to your long-term happiness, he continued, “You will never let anyone touch it.” 

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    Al Roker & Deborah RobertsABC News reporter Roberts isn’t always one for chit-chat. “I don’t like the check-in,” she explaind. “If you’re calling just to say, ‘So, what’s up?’ no, I do not like that.” Everyone’s favorite TV weatherman, however, is a phone guy. And after years of chafing against his frequent calls, a pal proposed something that changed her stance. “One friend said to me, ‘Did you ever think that maybe he just feels comfortable when he hears your voice, because that tells him that all is right in the world?'” she recounted. “And I thought, ‘That’s very sweet. I’d never thought about it in that way. And if it means something to him, then it should mean something to me.'”Now, she said, “I have learned to take a breath and say, ‘Sweetie, I’ve got some stuff going on, but what’s going on with you? Great. I’m glad to hear from you. Got to go. Talk to you later. Love you.’ That makes all the difference in the world to him, and it doesn’t kill me for two minutes to be nice and sweet.” They celebrated their 29th anniversary in September 2024.  

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    Kelly Ripa & Mark ConsuelosThe building blocks for their nearly 30-year union began back in their newlywed days, when any fight—one involved the Riverdale actor throwing the talk show host’s ring out the window—felt like it could be it. “Early in a marriage, it’s easy to let little things become big things—whether it’s financial strain or career strain or you have kids and you’re sleep-deprived,” espoused the LIVE With Kelly and Ryan star. “But Mark taught me to walk away and take a breath. That’s when you figure out that it’s not a marriage-defining moment.”Some hard-earned wisdom, to be sure, but now the parents of three are reaping the benefits. “Anytime you see a couple who seems truly happy, you can bet they’ve gone through some crazy, crazy stuff together and they’ve survived,” he stated. “That’s something to be proud of.”

    Christopher Polk/Variety/Shutterstock

    Viola Davis & Julius TennonShe’s an introvert, she said, “maybe a step away from being a straight-up loner”; he’s the ultimate extrovert “the mayor of everywhere,” as he put it. She’s a touch messy; he’s “a little OCD” noted the Oscar winner. But, wed since 2003, they’ve long since learned to let the other do their thing. That’s the advice the How to Get Away With Murder lead said she gives to all her soon-to-be-wed friends. “Marriage does not start when you walk down the aisle,” she shared. “Your marriage starts when you look over at a person who you love more than anything, and there’s something about him—just one character trait that makes you say to yourself, ‘Oh man, that’s going to drive me crazy. I don’t know if I can deal with this.’ And then the next minute you say, ‘But you know what? I love him.’ That’s when your marriage starts.” 

    David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

    Lily Tomlin & Jane WagnerYou don’t reach the 50-year mark in any relationship by letting disagreements drag on. Any time there’s a blowup, noted the Grace and Frankie star, “Usually, I’m the one who apologizes. It’s not hard because I love her and can’t bear for her to feel lonely for even five minutes.” Even better is when she can avoid saying she’s sorry to the writer altogether. Her top takeaway, she shared, “Remember, when you’re angry at your partner and say something hurtful, you will be more angry at yourself later for having said hurtful things to the person you love. You’ll feel angry twice. Not good for your blood pressure, and certainly not good for your relationship.”

    Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic

    Judges Judy Sheindlin & Jerry SheindlinFew things are more on brand than former New York State Supreme Court judge Jerry declaring their decades-long union works because he usually lets the Judge Judy icon win. But for his bride it’s more about knowing you’re not always going to like the final verdict. Their 12-year marriage dissolved in 1990 when he couldn’t be the caretaker she needed following her father’s death. Yet, when they got back together one year later and quickly remarried, she had no delusions that he was suddenly going to be the type to run the household or take the lead on birthday plans. “Every relationship is different, but there is a common thread of unhappiness, and that unhappiness comes from trying to make another person different from who they are. You can try, but they’re always going to resent it,” she explained matter-of-factly. “I don’t think you should marry anyone with the expectation of changing who they are.”

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    Daniel Dae Kim & Mia Kim The Lost alum would be, well, lost without his longtime love, who he married in 1993. As he explained to E! News in April 2025, “My wife—being patient as I traipse around the world, going from job to job—she’s kept our family stable. She’s been fantastic.”Calling her a “very patient woman,” the actor said his wife and their two sons keeps him “humble no matter what’s happening.””They shape my values,” he added. “It’s great to have that perspective and North Star.”

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