• Neither high school relationships nor Hollywood relationships are known for longevity.
• But these 19 celebrity couples met as teens, and many of them are still together today.
• Knicks star Jalen Brunson met his wife, Ali, when they were in high school.

Even in the most stable environment, it's hard to maintain a relationship that moves from high school to the real world.

Now imagine doing it as a celebrity.

Nevertheless, these 19 couples all met as high schoolers (or in some cases, even earlier), and made it work for years after, even if not all of them are still together today.

Here are 19 celebrity couples who met back when they were just regular teenagers.

Jalen Brunson and Ali Marks

The Knicks superstar has been dating his wife, Ali Marks, since high school — their 2015 prom photo is still on his Instagram, captioned, "Went to prom with the best date anyone could ask for."

They got engaged in 2022 and married in 2023.

"She's always been by my side and I'm lucky to have her," Brunson told People after the big day.

In a nod to their long relationship, Marks wore her prom dress as her second look at the wedding.

They welcomed their first child, Jordyn, in 2024.

Patrick and Brittany Mahomes

The 2023 Super Bowl champion has been with Brittany, his now-wife, since they were classmates in Tyler, Texas.

In 2020, Patrick proposed to Brittany, captioning an Instagram post with "#RingSZN." A few days later, the couple revealed they were expecting their first child together. Their daughter, Sterling, was born in February 2021.

They married in March 2022. Their second child, a boy named Patrick "Bronze" Lavon Mahomes III, was born in November 2022. Their third baby, Golden, was born in January 2025.

Brittany and Sterling were at the stadium to watch the Chiefs quarterback win his second Super Bowl in February 2023.

Snoop Dogg and Shante Broadus

Their first son, Cordé, was born in 1994, and they were married three years later in 1997. Snoop even shared an adorable throwback shot of the two at prom on Instagram. The ups and downs of their marriage were all documented on their reality TV show, "Snoop Dogg's Father Hood."

The couple filed for divorce in 2004, but reconciled and renewed their vows in 2008.

According to VH1, Snoop told Queen Latifah in 2013 that "[he] had no understanding of how I was hurting her and how I was betraying myself, until I [realized] I need to love this woman who loves me and had my kids. [I needed to] put my life in perspective and let my music and my business become secondary."

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Vanessa Nadal

Miranda and Nadal attended the same New York City high school, but they never actually spoke — though that didn't stop Miranda from developing a crush on his future wife.

"She was gorgeous and I'm famously bad at talking to women I find attractive. I have a total lack of game," Miranda told The New York Times in 2010.

They reconnected on Facebook years later, after they both graduated from college. They tied the knot in September 2010. They now have two sons.

Jeff Daniels and Kathleen Treado

Daniels and Treado grew up in Chelsea, Michigan, and met in high school. They've been together ever since. Throughout his highly successful career, the couple still call Chelsea their home, and they raised their three kids there.

In 2014, Daniels told MLive about why he chose to stay close to home rather than move out to industry hubs Los Angeles or New York City, saying, "[Chelsea] was home. Kathleen and I had both been raised here; good enough for us, good enough for them."

LeBron James and Savannah Brinson

Brinson told Harper's Bazaar in 2010 about their first date at Outback, calling it "basic," but she shared that it was also when she knew he loved her.

"I knew he loved me when I left my leftovers from dinner in his car," Brinson said. "I'd totally forgotten about them, and he brought them to me. I think he just wanted another excuse to come and see me."

Brinson became pregnant with their first child, Bronny, while she was still in high school, and she was nervous that it would derail their lives, but James assured her that everything would be OK.

James finally proposed to his longtime girlfriend in 2011, after 10 years of dating, per the Los Angeles Times. They tied the knot in 2014. They also had two more kids.

LL Cool J and Simone Smith

LL Cool J shared the story of how he met his wife during an interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

The rapper told Kimmel in 2012 that he "was just 19, something like that," when he was driving down the block on Easter Sunday. His friend asked him if he wanted to meet one of his friend's cousins, and once he got a look at Smith, he told his friend, "Oh yeah, I'll meet your cousin."

Smith recalled she was 17 years old when they met. The pair married in 1995 after dating for 8 years, and they have 4 kids together.

Bono and Ali Hewson

Bono and Hewson met when they were teenagers at school. Hewson played hard to get, since she didn't want to be known as "just another of Bono's girls," but eventually his pursuit of her was successful.

Their first date culminated with him walking her to the bus stop, per the Huffington Post.

The U2 star has called their relationship "a magic carpet ride." She "sees me as a figure of amusement," said Bono while speaking to The Sun.

Kendrick Lamar and Whitney Alford

The "Not Like Us" rapper is pretty private about his personal life, but we know that he met his fiancée when they were both high schoolers in Compton, California, according to Billboard.

"She's been here since day one," Lamar said of Alford in a 2014 New York Times Magazine profile.

They got engaged in 2015 and have two children together. The entire family appears on the cover of his fifth album, "Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers" in 2022.

Steph and Ayesha Curry

Even though they're basketball's golden couple, Ayesha had never even attended a game until she was 19 — five years after she met her future-husband Steph, ABC News reported.

The two met as teenagers in Charlotte, North Carolina. They never officially dated when they were that young, but according to Ayesha, they'd talk on the phone sometimes. "It was that shy middle school, high school stuff," she said.

When the basketball star was flown out to Los Angeles for the ESPY Awards, his first thought was of his childhood crush. They met up, saw the sights, and the rest is history.

Now, he's widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players in the game, and she's turned herself into a brand. Ayesha has written cookbooks, opened a barbecue restaurant, hosted a cooking show on the Food Network called "Ayesha's Home Kitchen," and founded a skincare brand called Sweet July.

They welcomed their fourth child in 2024.

Jon Bon Jovi and Dorothea Hurley

People reported the couple met at Sayreville War Memorial High School in their New Jersey hometown, and have been together ever since. They have four kids together.

At the peak of Bon Jovi's fame in 1989, the couple decided to elope in Las Vegas and were married by an Elvis impersonator. And though Bon Jovi has die-hard fans, Hurley isn't concerned.

"I think it's great they love the music," she told People in 2016.

Ron Howard and Cheryl Alley

Even though getting married young (they were both 21) might seem like a risky endeavor, these two have beaten the odds, successfully navigating Hollywood and parenthood.

"I felt really lucky when we met. It's crazy — we were teenagers, it shouldn't have worked. We got married young, that shouldn't have worked either, and yet it really and truly has," Howard told the Huffington Post about his decades-long marriage to Alley in 2013.

And now their kids are famous, too — their daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, starred in the "Jurassic World" franchise and regularly directs episodes of the "Star Wars" TV shows.

Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins

While they had known each other since they were kids (since first grade, to be exact, according to Country Living), Rhett and Akins didn't start dating until they were teenagers — and it didn't stick at first. The two broke up soon after, and actually almost both married other people, according to People.

But thankfully (for Rhett), Akins broke up with her boyfriend, and Rhett "moved in for the kill." They dated for six months and married in 2013, when they were both 22. They now have four daughters and a son, born in 2026.

Ja Rule and Aisha Atkins

According to Ja Rule, the two have been together since middle school. He told Ebony magazine in 2002 that "the first time I met her I was getting off the school bus, and she was the new girl in school." 

The couple were married in 2001 and have three kids together.

Besides dealing with the normal issues that couples go through and constantly being scrutinized by the media, they also had to spend almost two years apart while Ja Rule was in prison for tax evasion and illegal gun possession. He was released in 2013, per TMZ.

Mariano and Clara Rivera

Famed baseball player Rivera met his wife in elementary school, and the pair have been together ever since, The New York Times reported.

They were married in Panama in 1991, and they lived there until 2000, when they moved to Westchester County, New York.

Eminem and Kim Scott

Their long and tumultuous relationship began when they were just kids.

Even if you have just cursory knowledge about Eminem, you know about Kim, the subject of many of the rapper's most disturbing songs, like "Kim," and "'97 Bonnie and Clyde."

The two met when they were just kids (she was 13 and he was 15). Kim and her twin, Dawn, had previously run away from an allegedly abusive home, and eventually began living with Eminem and his mother.

In 1995, they welcomed their daughter Hailie (the subject of more Eminem songs), and were married in 1999.

But things quickly went downhill — Eminem was accused of pistol-whipping a man he claimed he saw kissing his wife, according to NME. The charge was dropped in favor of a reduced charge of carrying a concealed weapon, and he was sentenced to two years' probation. The couple divorced in 2001.

Five years later, they shocked the world and remarried. But just three months after that, the rapper filed for divorce. Their second divorce was finalized in 2006, per People.

Though Eminem built his brand around graphic songs, he apologized to his former wife on the track "Bad Husband" from his 2017 album, "Revival."

Joey Fatone and Kelly Baldwin

Fatone and Baldwin had been dating for 10 years and had a daughter together in 2001 before they were married in 2004, per People. Their second daughter was born in 2010.

Their relationship was plagued with rumors of infidelity from outlets such as Page Six, reaching a high in 2013 after his appearances on two seasons of "Dancing with the Stars." At the time, when Baldwin was asked for a comment, she simply responded, "I don't really want to talk about this."

In 2020, Fatone confirmed to Us Weekly that they were getting divorced.

Robin Thicke and Paula Patton

Thicke and Patton's 21-year-long relationship began when they were 16.

Thicke told Essence in 2011 that their relationship began when they were teenagers, and Patton was "the president of the Black student union and [Thicke] was just a silly white boy."

But they had actually met a year prior at a teen club where, according to Thicke, he serenaded his future wife with the Stevie Wonder song "Jungle Fever."

They were together for 21 years and married for nine before filing for divorce in 2014 and engaging in a particularly nasty custody battle for their son, Julian.

Misha Collins and Victoria Vantoch

Collins and Vantoch got married in 2001, though they met way back in high school — Collins was the only boy in one of Vantoch's English classes.

The two separated at some point before 2021. He acknowledged the split in the author's note in his poetry book, "Some Things I Still Can't Tell You."

• I went to Las Vegas for a work conference and met my future husband there.
• Within 24 hours, I told him I'd follow him anywhere.
• Thirteen years later, I'm married to him and raising our children in Trinidad and Tobago.

Thirteen years ago, I flew from Atlanta to Las Vegas for a work conference. I thought I was going to learn how to build a business: strategies, contacts, maybe some motivation. I did not know I was walking into the room where I would meet the man I would eventually marry.

I was 25 and tired of dating men who looked good on paper but didn't feel right in real life. From the outside, some of the men I dated seemed impressive: money, status, ambition, the kind of résumés many women are told to want. But something was always missing.

So when I received an invitation to a work conference for a direct-selling business I'd recently joined, I was more than willing to meet someone new.

I was ready to settle down and find my partner

Before the trip, I made changes that felt dramatic at the time. I cut off the locs I'd been growing for more than four years. I stopped dating. I changed the names of several men in my phone to "Do Not Answer." I made a private vow to stop entertaining almost-right men while praying for the right one.

On the flight to Las Vegas, I couldn't sleep, which almost never happens. I kept shifting in my seat, restless in a way I couldn't explain. Eventually, I pulled out my cream-colored journal and jotted down everything I wanted in a husband.

Nine bullet points. Not a fantasy list — an honest reckoning with the kind of man I wanted to love, trust, and follow.

I met my husband while waiting in line at the conference

The next morning, I woke up late. One hour before the conference doors opened, I rushed downstairs in four-inch heels to find the line already wrapped around the corner.

The conference had attracted people from many countries, and the hallway was full of accents. One caught my attention: warm, rhythmic, unfamiliar. A man smiled at me, which was enough of an invitation to make an instant friend. I joined him in line, grateful for the rescue.

We made small talk, but then I looked up and saw another man standing nearby.

Tall. Handsome. A Caribbean rhythm in his voice. Something about him stopped me. It was an immediate knowing — the kind that sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud.

I was looking at my husband.

He was from Trinidad and Tobago and had only arrived in America three days earlier. This was his first time in the US. He wasn't trying to impress me with what he had or who he knew. He was calm, sure of himself, and something about him made me feel safe.

We've since built a life together

The next day, after barely 24 hours, I said something that still shocks me.

"I don't know where Trinidad is on the map," I told him. "But I'll follow you wherever you go."

I meant it. Thirteen years later, I am married to him and raising our children in Trinidad and Tobago. I moved here because it felt like a beautiful place to raise my children.

They get to grow up climbing mango, coconut, and plum trees in our backyard, connected to nature in a way I didn't experience growing up in inner-city Baltimore.

The hardest adjustment has been being far from my immediate family, but the peace and simplicity here have been worth it.

I went to Las Vegas looking for business advice. I left with a future I could never have planned for myself.

• Up to 40% of men admit to losing their rings. My husband was one of them.
• To help travelers like us find lost jewelry, people-for-hire scour beaches with metal detectors.
• We found Antigua's very own treasure hunter through Facebook.

My husband and I were on our blissful honeymoon, beach hopping in Antigua, when a look of horror passed over his face. Amid the splashing and digging for shells, his wedding ring had slipped off.

"It's gone. My ring is gone!" Panic rose in his voice.

I, despite my dramatic nature, was surprisingly calm. We bought his 14-karat gold ring at Costco for $1,000. If we had to lose a ring, I'd rather his than mine, which is a family heirloom. However, his band was the one I'd slipped on his finger after our vows, so it had sentimental value.

"We'll find it!" I squeaked. I ran up to a vendor on the beach and asked if we could borrow snorkels. We spent the next hour circling the same 30-square-foot patch of the ocean floor. Nothing.

The sun was setting, so we dragged our dejected, dripping selves into towels and returned the masks. My husband wavered between dead silence and frustrated groans on the drive back.

That night, we looked through pictures and realized we'd lost it at a different beach: Turner's. We'd been looking in the wrong place.

Facebook to the rescue

My husband's not alone in his misfortune. Statistics vary, but several reports over the years estimate that between 10% to 40% of men lose their wedding rings at some point. Through many Reddit posts, I realized there's a solution: a metal detector.

Turns out, people make careers from finding jewelry on the ocean floor. And it's getting more popular due to surging gold prices.

I came across an article in The Wall Street Journal about a famous man from the island of Mauritius who'd found a Frenchman's ring in the ocean not once but twice. I wondered if Antigua had its own treasure hunter.

So I posted in a tourists' Facebook group: "We're on our honeymoon. My husband lost his ring. Does anyone have a metal detector?"

The first comment completely deflated my confidence: "That's a bad omen lol." Another said, "I never wear my good jewelry in the ocean." Most people suggested we pray to St. Anthony or wished us luck. Finally, the next morning, someone mentioned Winston.

Winston Merchant's a local guy from St. John. Over a WhatsApp call, he offered: "$50 if I don't find it. $200 if I do. Cash." We agreed.

"Do you think it'll still be there after two days in the ocean?" I asked over the phone, anxiously chewing my lip.

"Ya, man. It'll be there." Winston's quiet confidence raised our hopes.

The day of the hunt

We met Winston the next morning, 44 hours after my husband lost his ring. He radiated calm. I live in New York City, so I can't grasp the concept of calm, let alone embody it. But this man did. He sported flip flops and a Bob Marley shirt.

As we got to talking, he estimated he's unearthed about 1,000 pieces of jewelry.

"But I've been doing this a long time, man. Since 1998," he later said.

He said he's found rings, chains, and bracelets, mostly for tourists. One time, he said he tracked down a valuable pendant the size of a grain of rice on a resort lawn. Another time, he found a woman's diamond ring on the Sandals beach and delivered it to the airport moments before she boarded her flight.

Full-time, Winston farms marijuana and black pineapple — a rare, exceptionally sweet variety only found in Antigua. This helps him fund his side gig of metal detecting, which isn't cheap.

He said his latest detector, a Garrett Sea Hunter Mark II, cost him $800, and a pair of new headphones set him back $140.

He used my own ring to make sure he was on the right frequency for gold, adjusting the knobs as he floated the sensor over my hand. Then, he set off, scanning the beach.

Soon, he was knee deep in the bluest water I'd ever seen. Whenever his sensor beeped in his ears, he'd scoop a pile of sand from the ocean floor and sift it with a second contraption that resembled a pasta colander, but was cylinder-shaped.

He unearthed a quarter. "I'll keep that," he cracked. Then a matchbox car. Then one aluminum can lid after another. All of it went deep in his pocket so he wouldn't come across it again.

At one point, he was neck deep in water, and I was beginning to lose hope.

Striking gold

An hour and a half later, I sat 15 feet from the water's edge contemplating how we'd afford a new ring when Winston calmly sauntered up.

He held out the pasta-collander tool and said, "You better go surprise him." I peered inside, and there lay a golden ring. Eyes wide, I screamed an expletive.

"Go put it in a shell or something," Winston smiled knowingly. Clearly, he'd done this before.

I ran up the beach, grabbed a shell, and tucked it and the ring inside my palm. I bolted up to my husband and said, "Look at this pretty shell I found." Unfolding my hand, I revealed the ring. Another expletive. My husband's eyes were gleaming.

The pair of us bounced around, cackling to anyone who'd listen, "Winston found it! In the ocean of all places!"

Collectively, that ring spent more hours in the ocean than I did on my honeymoon.

Winston didn't seem surprised at his success. He estimates his find rate is 95%. Sometimes he ditches the metal detector and searches with his hand by feel. He puts so much effort into his hunts because he knows the feeling of losing something special, he told me.

"It's not just a ring. A lot of memories flash through your head when you lose it," he said. "That joy from your vacation gets pushed back, and you leave bitter. I make somebody happy again."

It seemed fitting that my husband was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates hat. We'd been searching for lost treasure with Winston, who'd struck gold.

• When I was a kid, I thought adults follow the same path: fall in love, buy a house, and have kids.
• By the time I was 30, I hadn't reached any of those milestones.
• I've slowly realized the life plan never worked for me, and I'm OK with where I'm at now.

I have been a hopeless romantic for as long as I can remember. Not just in relationships, but in how I imagined my life would unfold.

Growing up in Mexico, I had a very specific idea of where I would be at 30. I thought I would be married with three kids, living in a big house in my hometown, surrounded by family and a stable routine.

Sometime in my 30s, I realized I had built a life completely different from the one I had planned. And that's OK.

I built my expectations based on what I saw growing up

As a kid and teenager, adulthood felt structured and predictable. The path was clear. You studied, built a career, found a partner, and settled down. Most of the adults around me followed or aimed for the same sequence. It created a sense of certainty.

My family reinforced those ideas in practical ways. Stability and staying close to home were important. Building a life that looked familiar to previous generations was seen as success. There was no formal pressure, but the expectations were always present in conversations, decisions, and examples.

Pop culture added another layer. Movies and television consistently showed people reaching major life milestones by their early 30s. Marriage, children, and home ownership were presented as the natural progression of adulthood. It made it feel universal.

For years, I made decisions assuming I was moving toward that outcome. I focused on education and career choices that would give me stability. I saw my 20s as preparation for the life I expected to have in my 30s. I did not question the plan because it felt like the only one available. But something started to feel off.

The further I went, the less the plan made sense

The shift did not happen all at once. It came through a series of decisions and realizations over time. Looking back, a lot of it came from following a playbook that was not written for me. It was shaped by a different generation, in a different economic and social context.

The more I tried to apply that model to my own life, the less it worked. The markers of success I had grown up with did not feel as accessible or even as relevant. Still, I kept moving forward, thinking that if I did enough of the right things, I would eventually arrive at the life I had imagined.

That belief shaped major decisions. I traveled around the world, moving from Mexico City to New York and later to London, partly driven by ambition and partly by the idea that progress meant getting closer to that version of adulthood.

But each move did the opposite. It created more distance from the life I had originally planned, while also exposing me to entirely different ways of thinking about work, relationships, and success.

By the time I reached my 30s, the gap was clear. I was not married. I did not have children. I did not own a house in my hometown (or anywhere else). At first, that difference was difficult to ignore. I compared myself to the timeline I had in mind and felt behind. Letting go of that comparison took time, especially because it was tied to how I had learned to define success growing up.

The differences forced me to define success on my own terms

Over time, I realized that the life I had planned was not actually built for me. It was assumed that my priorities would stay the same and that the world around me would not change. In reality, both had shifted.

Those decisions changed me. I am not the same person who dreamed of that plan. I no longer rely on inherited playbooks to guide my choices. I became more intentional about how I spend my free time and who I spend it with. Relationships became less about proximity and more about effort. Career decisions became less about following a linear path and more about building something sustainable and meaningful.

I also started to measure success differently. Instead of focusing on specific milestones by a certain age, I began to look at whether my daily life reflected what I valued. That included the type of work I was doing, the relationship I was building, and the environment I was living in.

My life is less predictable than I expected it to be at 30. I do not have the fixed structure I once associated with adulthood. However, I have more control over my decisions and a clearer understanding of what works for me. I know who I am. And I have peace. That's the best thing that could ever happen to me.

• My friends and family thought I was making a mistake when I moved states for a new relationship.
• At first, I felt homesick, but my partner supported me in a way that validated my decision.
• Now, we're married with kids, and I'm so glad I took a risk on love.

When I was 21, I fell in love for the first time.

Tim and I met online before it was cool. An avid fisherman, sports fanatic, and gifted salesman, he wasn't my usual type — but he was charming, funny, awkward, and sweet. I fell for him, hook, line, and sinker.

There was only one problem. Tim lived in Minneapolis, and I lived in Chicago.

We made long-distance work for as long as we could. On the rare weekends I wasn't waitressing, I traveled to Minnesota for ice fishing and bar hopping. When Tim's schedule allowed, he visited me at my parents' house for family dinners and nights out with friends.

Our time together was fun and exciting, but after seven months of constant travel, we knew we had some decisions to make.

When Tim and I decided to take the next step, I moved to Minnesota

After a four-year collegiate stint in Michigan, I'd sworn to myself that I'd never leave Chicago again. Not only were my family and friends there, but it was comforting and familiar. It was home.

Tim understood my love for Chicago from the moment we met. He was early in his dream career as a salesman, and I hadn't yet decided what I wanted to do professionally. Even so, he reassured me that I would never have to move — that, instead, he would find a way to relocate for me.

The more reassuring he was, though, the more I began seriously considering moving to Minnesota. Logistically, it just made sense.

My family and friends were just as charmed by Tim as I was, but they were skeptical, too. They cautioned me against moving, reminding me that Tim and I hadn't known each other that long.

The more I thought about beginning a new chapter, though, the more right it felt. Whether or not Tim and I lasted, maybe an adventure was exactly what I needed to kick off the adult chapter of my life.

Despite their warnings, I began searching for a job in Minneapolis. When I found a new job and a new roommate in the same week, it felt like fate.

I struggled with homesickness at first, but Tim supported me

My life in Minnesota wasn't what I had imagined. Living away from home was difficult, and I was miserably homesick for weeks. I was also adjusting to life in my first apartment, along with a new, very demanding job.

I was thrilled to be closer to Tim, but the struggles I was experiencing overshadowed much of my joy. Despite these difficulties, Tim remained patient, sure of our relationship, even when my confidence wavered.

On Halloween, my family's favorite holiday, Tim dressed up as a giant piece of pizza to cheer me up. When the first snow fell that season, Tim was waiting in my new apartment with a Christmas tree in tow.

By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, bringing with it chocolate-covered strawberries and three dozen white roses (my favorite), most of my homesickness had faded.

I realized that Tim was my future, wherever we lived

After six months, I finally began to find my footing. My roommate and I developed a strong bond, and I began to branch out into new social circles.

I fell in love with Minnesota in the summertime. I even learned to fish! Turns out, Tim was an excellent teacher.

Tim was my constant, in good times and bad. As the months continued to pass, I began to realize that maybe, this wasn't just the beginning of a new chapter — maybe it was the beginning of forever.

One evening, eight months after I first arrived in Minnesota, Tim invited me out for a casual dinner. I accepted, thinking nothing of it, not even questioning the fact that he wanted us to explore an antique store 15 minutes before our reservation.

I was sifting through a pile of old postcards when I realized that Tim was nowhere to be seen — until I rounded the corner and there he was, on bended knee, a tiny box in his outstretched hand.

We were married that December in Chicago. We spent another year in Minnesota after that, before returning to my hometown for good, putting down roots a few miles from my childhood home.

Thirteen years and six children later, I'm forever grateful that I ignored well-meaning warnings from my friends and family. I may have risked it all on love, but in the end, it was worth it.