Celebrity Couples Who Have Been Together for 50 Years (Or Longer!)

Many stars have golden relationships that have lasted at least 50 years.

For instance, Dolly Parton has been married to Carl Dean since 1966 and they still remain blissfully in love.

“We’re the perfect partners,” Parton exclusively told Us Weekly in January 2022. “We both have a great sense of humor. … We’re able to solve any problems and any situation, making a joke about it and not letting it get too heavy, but we respect each other and we like each other. We lucked up, let’s put it that way.”

Parton also revealed the “little ways” that the pair keep their spark alive.

“Last year on his birthday, I dressed up in my Playboy bunny suit, made him breakfast and [ran] around in that for a little while,” she quipped to Us. “You know, most people can keep a marriage [going strong] if you make a little effort. Some people just get slouching and lazy and about stuff that ain’t important, like leaving the toilet seat up. And if that’s the worst thing you’ve to worry about, you’re already in trouble.”

Keep scrolling for more celebrity couples — including Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson, Martin and Janet Sheen and more — who have been together for 50 years or longer:

Courtesy of Dolly Parton/Instagram
Dolly Parton and Carl Dean
Parton and Dean first crossed paths in 1964 shortly after she moved to Nashville to become a singer. They met outside a local laundromat.
“I guess kind of in the back of my mind I was maybe flirtin’ a little,” Parton recalled in a 1970 interview with The Tennesseean. “But mainly I was just bein’ friendly because I’d always been the kind of person who would speak back and smile.”
Parton and now-retired asphalt businessman Dean, who primarily stays out of the public eye, got married two years later.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson
Jackson and Richardson met in 1970 while attending Morehouse College and Spelman College, respectively, which are both located in Atlanta. The pair got married in 1980 and celebrated their golden anniversary in August 2020.
“50 years ago we started dancing, it was all fun & games. 40 years ago today, shit got real,” Jackson gushed via Instagram. “The slow drag of our lives pressed together, I led sometimes, sometimes she did. We finally found that rhythm where there was no leader, we moved as one. We’re still glued together, hip to hip, a holding each other up, not covering as much of the floor, but owning & loving the space that’s ours.”
He added, “You for keeping me on my toes & on the beat for 18,250 days. You make my soul 🎶sing‼️ Don’t change the tune, we’re not done dancing.”
Three years later, Richardson directed Jackson in The Piano Lesson on Broadway, for which he scored a 2023 Tony Award nomination.
Together, they share daughter Zoe, who was born in 1982.
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Martin and Janet Sheen
Martin and Janet have been married since 1961, going on to welcome four children. Two of their sons, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, have followed in their father’s acting footsteps.
After celebrating their 54th anniversary in 2016, Martin opened up to Closer about how Janet “saved” him during his past heart attack. (Martin suffered a heart attack at the age of 37 while filming 1979’s Apocalypse Now, a notoriously plagued production.)
“There was a struggle to get me to a hospital because we were in a remote area of the jungle. My wife, Janet, was running down the corridor, and I was on a gurney being wheeled in, and I looked up and saw her face,” Martin recalled. “She leaned down and whispered, ‘It’s only a movie, babe. Please, it’s only a movie!’”
He added, “It was very serious, and she handled it like a pro. She had me laughing in the most dire circumstances. She said, ‘Don’t take yourself so seriously.’”
According to Martin, they didn’t make a big fuss of their anniversary because “every day is a celebration with this dame.”
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William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett
The Boy Meets World alums, who also played a married couple on the ‘90s sitcom, wed in 1951 after initially meeting as students at Northwestern University.
“He makes me laugh. His sense of humor and his ability every day to find something funny is really good for me because I’m very intense,” Bartlett told Forbes in March 2022. “That and being a great father. He’s a great father.”
The pair adopted sons Michael and Robert in 1964 and 1966, respectively, after the stillbirth of son William.
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Christopher and Georgianne Walken
The Walkens first met in 1966 when they were both cast as dancers in a touring production of West Side Story. Christopher and Georgianne dated for three years before tying the knot in 1969.
“Every once in a while — certainly not often — I’ll be looking out the window, and I’ll think, I feel pretty good,” Christopher told The New York Times in February 2022. “My bills are paid, my wife is healthy, the weather’s nice. That’s really all I care about: when, apropos of nothing, I happen to look out the window and think, This is good.”
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Michael and Shakira Caine
The actor was first enamored with now-wife Shakira when he saw her onscreen in a Maxwell House commercial that aired on British television in 1971. After a mutual friend passed along the former pageant queen’s phone number, Michael got in touch to request a date.
“I fell in love with her in about eight minutes. It took her two hours to fall in love with me,” he joked to Radio Times in October 2018. “We don’t need anybody else except the family. We’re very happy in our own company. And we all of us, no matter how nice and loving and lovely we are, all have a slightly bad side. Shakira is the only person I ever met who didn’t have a bad side. There’s no bad side. It’s all good.”
Michael and Shakira wed in 1973, going on to welcome daughter Natasha. (Michael is also the father to daughter Dominique from a past relationship.)
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Sissy Spacek and Jack Fisk
The Carrie star met Fisk on the set of 1973’s Badlands when he asked to escort Spacek home.
“One day he asked me to ride home with him on a boat. We loaded up, and there came a terrible flash flood,” she recalled to Texas Monthly in 1991. “The boat sank. Right then I knew life with Jack was going to be eventful.”
Two years later in 1974, Spacek and Fisk got married before expanding their family. They share daughters Schuyler and Madison.
Mike Marsland/WireImage
Ron and Cheryl Howard
The Happy Days alum started dating Cheryl in high school, going on to get married in 1975. They later welcomed four kids — Bryce Dallas, Jocelyn, Paige and Reed — and still remain happily in love. 
“People say, ‘How’d you do it?’ There’s no technique. There’s no tactic other than communication is really important. You have to learn to communicate and have difficult conversations in constructive ways,” Ron told People in 2019. “Beyond that, there’s an element of luck because people either grow together or they don’t and I don’t think you can force that.”
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Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner
Tomlin and Wagner fell in love at first sight in 1971.
“I tell you, in two minutes, I fell in love with her,” Tomlin said at the Lambda Literary Awards in July 2020. “She had on hot pants, stretchy boots that went up to her knee, and a little backpack. I don’t know what it was, but I was in love.” 
Tomlin and Wagner went on their first date the next day before they started professionally collaborating. (Wagner is an accomplished playwright.)
After 42 years together, Tomlin and Wagner got married in 2014.
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Alan and Arleen Alda
The M*A*S*H actor met Arleen during college when they both attended a mutual friend’s dinner party in 1956. They immediately bonded after a rum cake fell onto the kitchen floor.
“We did eat the rum cake off the floor and were inseparable after that,” Alan recalled via X in August 2021. “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.”
Less than one year later in 1957, Alan and Arleen got married. They went on to welcome daughters Eve, Elizabeth and Beatrice.
 
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