6 Long-Term Celebrity Couples Who Never Married, From Kurt and Goldie to Eva and Ryan

The Gist

• More and more A-list couples are deciding to ‘Kurt and Goldie’ it, aka choosing never to marry despite spending decades together.

• Their reasons for not tying the knot range from fear of divorce to having different interpretations of what marriage means.

• Ryan Gosling, Rose Byrne, and Oprah Winfrey are among the celebrities who’ve been coupled up for over 10 years without a ring.

The love story of a lifetime doesn’t always feature wedding bells. Many famous (and non-famous) couples have made the decision not to get married, even after spending decades together. They’ll profess that they’re head over heels for one another, and they might even share kids, but you won’t see them walking down the aisle anytime soon.

Why won’t they make like Beyoncé and put a ring on it? The reasons vary. CNN’s Chris Wallace questioned Goldie Hawn about her lack of formal union with longtime beau Kurt Russell in 2023, asking in an interview, “Why aren’t the two of you married?”

“Why should we be?” the actress replied. “Isn’t that a better question?” Pressed to elaborate, she cited her and Russell’s previous divorces as one of the reasons they never tied the knot with each other. “When it doesn’t work out, it ends up to be big business,” she said. “It’s always ugly.”

Other couples have implied that their nuptials will happen one day, but they’re in no rush to make things official. Whatever the reason, here are a few notable long-term celebrity couples who never married.

01 of 06

Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell

Hawn and Russell are in it for the long haul. The couple met in 1966 and began dating in 1983, but never decided to say their ‘I do’s.’ They welcomed their only child together, son Wyatt Russell, in 1986, and also share kids from previous relationships. In 2020, Hawn told People the secret to their partnership of over 40 years is simple: “You’ve just got to want to be together. I don’t think there’s any way other than do it.”

02 of 06

Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale

Even though Oscar-nominated actress Rose Byrne hasn’t married longtime boyfriend Bobby Cannavale, she feels as if they’re already husband and wife. “I’m more married to him than anybody I’ve ever been with my whole life,” Byrne told People in 2023. The If I Had Legs I’d Kick You star and the Scarpetta actor were introduced through mutual friends in 2012 and went public with their relationship in 2013. They share two sons: Rocco and Rafael.

03 of 06

Winona Ryder and Scott Mackinlay Hahn

Stranger Things alum Winona Ryder has been in a relationship with fashion designer Scott Mackinlay Hahn since 2011. In 2016, she told The Edit (via TIME) that she’d “rather never have been married than been divorced a few times. Not that there’s anything wrong with divorce, but I don’t think I could do it if that was a possibility.” She also cited the example set by her parents as a driving force behind her own philosophy, saying,  “When your parents are madly in love for 45 years, your standards are really high.”

04 of 06

Oprah Winfrey and Stedman Graham

Like Hawn and Russell, Oprah Winfrey and Stedman Graham have been together since the ‘80s. Although they were briefly engaged in 1992, they called it off in 1993. In 2019, the billionaire media mogul told People that avoiding the wedding route helped save their relationship. “Both he and I now say, ‘If we had married, we would not be together,’” Winfrey explained.

“No question about it—we would not stay married, because of what that would have meant to him, and I would have had my own ideas about it,” she added.

05 of 06

Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor

While they’ve been together for over a decade, Sarah Paulson and girlfriend Holland Taylor are happily unmarried. In a 2024 appearance on Andy Cohen Live, Taylor shared more about their indifference to walking down the aisle. “We’ve never talked about it with any interest,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to mean to us what it means to a lot of people.” Paulson had previously revealed on the SmartLess podcast that she and Taylor also don’t live together, calling it the “secret” to their relationship.

06 of 06

Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson

Saturday Night Live alum Maya Rudolph and director Paul Thomas Anderson were first romantically linked in 2001. The longtime couple aren’t married, but Rudolph has referred to Anderson as her husband. “People know what that means,” she told The New York Times of using the label in 2018. “It means he’s the father of my child, and I live with him, and we are a couple, and we are not going anywhere,” she said. Rudolph and Anderson have welcomed four children: son Jack and daughters Pearl, Lucille, and Minnie.

Read the original article on InStyle