Celebrity CouplesLists about the most interesting and entertaining celebrity couples, how they met, why they split, and the fascinating details inside their relationships and marriages.
Updated December 13, 2021 23.2K votes 6.6K voters 509.5K views
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When two famous people get together, the public is bound to be fascinated. And since successful types often attract other successful types, power couples throughout history are plentiful. Some of these dynamic duos catapulted into the spotlight together, while others were big names independently first. But whether they're celebrities, politicians, or even criminals, their romances took the world by storm.
Of course, not all love lasts forever, and power couples are no exception. Some of these pairs continue to be #CoupleGoals, some broke up, and others did the on-again, off-again dance. Since all of their love stories unfolded in the public eye, it's easy to assume you know more about these couples than you do your own parents. But these surprising facts give a glimpse behind the curtain of these fabled romances. Ranging from the super cute to the super bizarre, read on for some fascinating tidbits about power couples throughout time.
Marilyn Monroe was a rising star when she met and married Yankees player Joe DiMaggio. But DiMaggio didn't like that Monroe's career was headed to sex symbol status. He got angry at the filming of the famous subway grate scene in The Seven Year Itch, and Monroe ended up filing for divorce less than a year later.
Sadly, her subsequent marriage to playwright Arthur Miller was not a happy one, and after this divorce, Monroe and DiMaggio rekindled a friendship. DiMaggio reportedly told friends that the two were going to remarry, but Monroe passed before that could happen.
DiMaggio ended up arranging his ex-wife's funeral, keeping the public and the Hollywood execs away, as he blamed them for her demise. DiMaggio continued to send roses to Monroe's grave several times a week for the next two decades until his passing in 1999. His last words were, "I'll finally get to see Marilyn."
While they never married, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have proven you don't need a piece of paper to make things last. Or keep things interesting.
While appearing on Harry, Russell recounted the pair's first night out together. They were going to be filming the 1984 movie Swing Shift together, a WWII-era feature about swing dancing. Russell wanted to improve his moves, so they hit up the only spot where they could dance to swing music: The Playboy Club.
After dancing the night away, Hawn and Russell decided to continue the party at the house Hawn had recently purchased to renovate. However, she'd forgotten the key, so the couple had to break into the empty house. As Russell recalls,
We eventually found our way upstairs, looking around at imaginary furniture and we were in the imaginary bedroom, now, and we are realistically having sex when the police walked in... So next thing I [see] is the flashlight...and Goldie and I are both like "What, what?"... We were being told I guess to go get a hotel room, which we did. That was our first date.
Country crooners Johnny and June Carter Cash are known for their rocky relationship, as their marriage weathered addiction and infidelity. But the relationship managed to last, as did Johnny's love notes to June.
According to one poll, a 1994 letter Johnny wrote for his wife's birthday is considered the greatest love letter of all time. In it, Cash writes:
We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each others [sic] minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.
But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much. Happy Birthday Princess.
June Carter also had a way with words, and it's thought that she wrote the original version of "Ring of Fire" after being inspired by a line in a poem and her budding relationship with Cash.
While many royal marriages of the past have been miserable arrangements with tragic ends, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were a refreshingly happy couple. In both of their memoirs, they say they fell in love with each other instantly when they were introduced in 1836.
When Victoria became queen the following year, she was the reigning monarch. And according to tradition, no one could propose marriage to a reigning monarch. So to follow tradition, Queen Victoria made a seemingly nontraditional move and proposed to Albert on his second visit to Windsor Castle in 1839.
The two were married until Albert's passing in 1861. Victoria's lengthy rule continued, but she wore black for the remainder of her life in mourning for her late husband.
Brilliance attracts brilliance, or at least in did in the case of the Curies, the scientific power couple who met in Paris in 1894.
While at first working on separate projects, the two eventually joined forces and earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 along with fellow physicist Henri Becquerel for their study of radiation. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and she continued her work after her husband's passing. This led to her second Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in chemistry, for her discovery of polonium and radium.
The Curie family added to their prize collection in 1935 when their daughter Irène and her husband earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, bringing the family total to a whopping five Nobels.
Bonnie and Clyde's two-year crime spree ended in 1934 when they were gunned down in a Ford V8 Model B. Six weeks earlier, Henry Ford received a letter from "Clyde Champion Barrow" expressing his appreciation for the car he and Bonnie used for quick getaways:
While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusivly [sic] when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever [sic] other car skinned and even if my business hasen’t been strickly [sic] legal it don’t hurt enything [sic] to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8...
The idea that Clyde would write this letter just before he and Bonnie were slain in the very same car makes some people doubt its authenticity. Handwriting experts aren't able to prove whether or not it's Clyde's handwriting, but over at Ford it's considered the real deal.
