There's something deeply satisfying about celebrities pairing up with regular people. First, because it suggests that anyone, even us weirdos, can be paired with an A-lister if we're in the right place at the right time. Second, because it also raises a lot of interesting questions: Why? How? Where did they meet? How does it work? Do regular people understand the concept of a glamorous couple? Do celebrities understand the concept of renting? It's fascinating.
If you're wondering who to direct that question to, we've got the answer for you here. From Riz Ahmed meeting his novelist wife at a coffee shop to Sydney Sweeney's “businessman” fiancé, here are the celebs and royals who tried to kiss a frog but ended up remaining a frog. Which brings us to the common folk!
Eddie Redmayne and Hannah Bagshawe
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Eton romance! Whether or not it's normal for people to go to Eton is up for debate, but either way, these lovebirds met at school, not on the red carpet. It all started when Redmayne walked (shirtless, I might add) at a charity fashion show during his university days. “I was a pale, freckled guy, and when I came on, the girls in the audience didn't pay me much attention,” Redmayne recalled. But Redmayne himself had his eye on Hannah Bagshawe, standing across the room at the after-party. “She was very beautiful, very funny, and loved art and theater, just like me, and we became friends.” The two officially started dating in 2012, when Bagshaw was working in financial public relations, and married in 2014. And yes, a decade later, they're still married.
The Duke of Westminster and Olivia Henson
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Hugh Grosvenor, aka the Duke of Westminster, was once considered one of Britain's prime bachelors. He's one of the country's richest men, with a net worth of more than £10 billion, and he's close to Prince William and Prince Harry. In fact, he's godfather to Prince George and Prince Archie. But this week, he's marrying Olivia Henson, an account manager at Bella's, a London-based B Corp-certified food company. By royal standards, this is pretty ordinary.
Riz Ahmed and Fatima Fareen Mirza
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Sure, she may now be a New York Times bestselling novelist, but when Fatima Fareen Mirza met Riz Ahmed at a Brooklyn coffee shop, she was the one reaching for the same laptop plug as him. “She's a brilliant novelist, and we met by chance when I was in New York and I was preparing for my role in Sound of Metal,” Ahmed told The Tonight Show in 2021. “We were sitting at the same table in a cafe where we'd both come to write, and we were fighting over the same laptop plug. [it was] “It's a very modern way to meet.” So cute. The couple tied the knot in a small, COVID-safe ceremony in 2020 and seem to be blissfully blissful together. Tip: Fatima is worth following on Instagram not only for her own interesting personality, but also for couple goals.
Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso
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The pair also had an incredible meeting (you know what happens when a publicist doesn't orchestrate a relationship?). It happened at a Miami bar after Matt Damon had finished a long day of filming. His co-stars invited him out for drinks, and he reluctantly accepted. “They said, 'Come on,' and they whisked me away,” Damon said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2011. “I literally saw her across a crowded room, and eight years and four kids later, that's my life. I don't know how we would have met if it hadn't happened.” […] “If you're tired, cheer yourself up and go to a bar, maybe you'll meet your wife there,” says Barroso, who now works as an interior designer.
Prince William and Kate Middleton
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The idea that Princess Kate is a “normal” civilian seems absurd now, but she was once just like us. Well. Having grown up in an upper-middle-class family in Berkshire, the Princess of Wales lived a much simpler life before meeting Prince William at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. So simple was her life that when it first emerged that they were dating, and then engaged, the British press referred to her, quite blatantly, on multiple occasions as a “commoner”. I guess that's what happens when you're not born into aristocracy!
George Clooney and Amal Clooney
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When George Clooney first met Amal Alamuddin, she was on the rise of her own legal success as an international human rights lawyer. A big name, to be sure, but by no means A-list. But she did have some big names in her life, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, to name just a few. She met Clooney at his Lake Como home through a friend in July 2013. The two married the following September.
Sydney Sweeney and Jonathan Davino
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Before the press tour for Anyone But You began, rumors were flying about Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell's close relationship as co-workers and husbands, but many people didn't even know Sweeney was engaged. Sweeney has actually been dating Davino since 2018, before Euphoria fame, before Madame Web fame, before pretty much all of this!
The two now work together as producers, but before Sweeney brought him on as a filmmaker, he was, in her words, a “businessman.” Many have reported that he's a “famous restaurateur” or “heir to the Chicago restaurant business,” but Sweeney denies that's true. “He's not the heir to a pizza company,” she told Glamour magazine in an interview. “He's a businessman. He's from Chicago. We've watched him grow up. [this narrative] It's been six years now and I'm like, 'What the heck?'”
Jennifer Lawrence and Cooke Maroney
Jennifer Lawrence and her partner are so low-key, I couldn't find any photos of them together.
PA Wire
At this point, you might be thinking: “Cooke Maroney? They just made that up?” But no, Maroney is the longtime biological husband of the much more conventionally named Jennifer Lawrence, an art dealer from Vermont who currently works as director at Gladstone 64, the Upper East Side home of Gladstone Gallery.
Maroney and Jennifer Law met in 2018, shortly after Jennifer's split from ex-boyfriend Darren Aronofsky. The two apparently met through Lawrence's best friend, Laura Simpson, who you may remember as Jennifer's date to the 2014 Oscars. The happy couple married in Rhode Island in October 2019 and now have a 2-year-old boy named Cy. They're a very low-key couple, so low-key that the only photos of them together are from the paparazzi!
Ed Sheeran and Cherry Seaborn
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After a number of relationships with bleach-blonde, long-banged singers (including Ellie Goulding and Nina Nesbitt), Sheeran eventually settled down with his Suffolk school friend Cherry Seaborn, who works in Deloitte's global climate team and also works a second job as a consultant and sustainability advocate. The pair had been friends since their childhoods, when they attended Thomas Mills High School in Framlingham, but did not become romantically involved until much later. They married in 2018 in an intimate ceremony with 40 guests, and have a two-year-old daughter, Jupiter.
James Corden and Julia Carey
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Gavin and Stacey may have shot James Corden to fame when he was still in his 20s, but his wife, Julia Carey, stayed mostly out of the spotlight throughout their relationship. Corden and Carey were introduced by Corden's good friend and History Boys co-star Dominic Cooper around 2009.
At the time, in 2009, Carey was working with the nonprofit organization Save the Children, and Cooper asked Corden to attend an event for the organization. From the moment he saw her, he was smitten. “I said, 'Hi, Jules. You might be the most beautiful woman in the world,'” the Late Late Show host recalled to People magazine. “She said, 'Thank you so much. That's something you say a lot.' And I said, 'I've never said that in my life.' And that was it. It was really done. I was going to do it, and miraculously, she was going to do it too.”
