8 celebrity couples who’ve been transparent about their unconventional relationships

The secret to a long, happy, and healthy marriage? For some celebrities, it’s about embracing a more unconventional relationship.

Boy Meets World actor William Daniels and St. Elsewhere actress Bonnie Bartlett, Hollywood’s longest married couple, recently made headlines after opening up about having “a little bit of an open relationship” shortly after getting hitched in 1951.

“It was non-spoken. Bill and I never sit down and make rules,” she told the Daily Mail. “We never sit down and talk about these things. We just don’t. We just live our lives. And if he’s away for a year, he’s away for a year.”

However, Bartlett clarified that this period of their marriage was “very painful.” Now, the two are happily monogamous. “I wouldn’t be with anyone else in my life than this woman sitting next to me,” Daniels said of Bartlett.

For some celebrity couples, though, strict monogamy isn’t the answer to a successful relationship. Others find they’re happier with a bit more breathing room than in traditional marriage. Below, we’re digging into eight more unconventional celebrity relationships.

Dolly Parton and Carl Dean

The iconic “Jolene” singer and her husband Carl Dean were together for 60 years before his death in March 2025. The two met in a Nashville laundromat when Parton was only 18. Two years later, they were married in a private ceremony attended only by Parton’s mother, the pastor, and his wife.

“They say that opposites attract, and it’s true,” she told PEOPLE in 2015. “We’re completely opposite, but that’s what makes it fun. I never know what he’s gonna say or do. He’s always surprising me.”

“Yes, it’s an open relationship, but not sexually, and I would kill him if I thought he was doing that,” she wrote. “He would shoot me too. At the end of the day, we love each other madly.”

It worked out for them. The couple renewed their vows in 2015 and remained married until his death in 2025.

Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter

Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter never officially married, though they were in a relationship for over a decade after meeting on the set of Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. They even had two children together.

During that time, they chose not to live under the same roof. Instead, they lived in adjoining houses in London. Carter addressed the couple’s unusual living arrangements with The Evening Standard in 2008. “In any relationship, after the first year is over, you can’t help but want your own space,” she explained. “We have different telly tastes and both work from home. But things obviously aren’t that bad between us, or I wouldn’t have gotten [pregnant], would I? I’m very happy.”

After the two split in 2014, Carter publicly referred to the breakup as a “divorce,” telling Harper’s Bazaar in 2016: “With divorce, you go through massive grief — it is a death of a relationship, so it’s utterly bewildering. Your identity, everything, changes.”

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have had one of the more tumultuous celebrity marriages in recent years.

The two first met on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1994, and Smith proposed three years later. The couple share two children, Jaden and Willow.

In 2013, the couple began fielding open marriage rumors after Pinkett Smith told HuffPost Live, “I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay. Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.”

She later clarified her statement on Facebook: “Will and I BOTH can do WHATEVER we want, because we TRUST each other to do so. This does NOT mean we have an open relationship… this means we have a GROWN one.”

In 2020, Pinkett Smith dropped a bombshell by revealing she’d had a romantic relationship with singer August Alsina during a period of separation from Smith. While promoting her memoir in 2023, she said they’d been separated since 2016 and were “living separately” from each other. “I think we were both stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be,” she said on Today.

Despite all of this, Pinkett Smith insists that they will never divorce — in part because of the infamous moment when Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. “Being there with him that night, what I did know, was that I might not have walked in there as his wife, but I left that night as his wife,” she said in a 2023 interview on CBS Mornings. “And as I sit here today, I am going to be by his side, always.”

Thomas Middleditch and Mollie Gates

Silicon Valley star Thomas Middleditch and his ex-wife, costume designer Mollie Gates, made headlines in 2019 when it was revealed the two were “swingers,” which Middleditch had copped to in an interview with Playboy.

“Only after I got married was I like, ‘Mollie, I’m sorry, but we have to get nontraditional here,’” Middleditch explained. “To her credit, instead of saying, ‘F— you, I’m out,’ she was like, ‘Let’s figure this out.’”

“To be honest, swinging has saved our marriage,” Middleditch continued.

Not quite — Gates filed for divorce from Middleditch in May 2020, a little over a year after that interview. The divorce was finalized in April 2021. According to a copy of the divorce settlement obtained by PEOPLE, Middleditch was forced to pay Gates $2.6 million.

Shirley MacLaine and Steve Parker

Hollywood icon Shirley MacLaine met her ex-husband, film producer Steve Parker, in 1954. They were together for nearly 30 years and had one daughter, Sachi Parker, before divorcing in 1982. And while things didn’t last between them, MacLaine looks back on their relationship — and the fact that it was an open relationship — fondly.

The Steel Magnolias star got candid during a 2016 interview Sirius XM interview. “I guess you would say ‘practiced an open marriage’ in 1954, which was another lifetime,” she told Cagle. “No one understood it, we did. He lived in Japan basically, I lived in America working, and this and that.”

MacLaine credited this casual openness to their longevity. “I think that’s the basis for a long-lasting marriage, if you really want to do such a thing. I would say better to stay friends and we don’t have enough time to talk about the sexuality of all. I was very open about all of that and so was he.”

Mo’Nique and Sidney Hicks

Mo’Nique and Sidney Hicks were high school sweethearts before Hicks became Mo’Nique’s manager. The two married in 2006 and have twin 20-year-old sons. In 2006, they revealed in an interview with Essence that their marriage was open. They also started a podcast about it: Mo’Nique & Sidney’s Open Relationship.

But nearly two decades later, Mo’Nique told The Hollywood Reporter that she “grew out of” the arrangement. “Life began to happen. I began to see a strength I had never seen before,” she said. “He loved me at my worst. I didn’t want to sacrifice that just for a lay. So I grew out of that.”

Rachael Ray and John Cusimano

Cooking host Rachael Ray and her longtime husband, entertainment lawyer John Cusimano, credit the success of their more than 20-year marriage to the fact that the two have deep respect for one another as individuals.

So, what does that mean? Well, it means that Cusimano and Ray literally stay in separate corners of their home, an arrangement that raised eyebrows when Ray explained it on her podcast, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, in 2024.

“I am wildly, wildly lucky that I have my husband. But he understands I need my space. He needs his space. John and I largely stay in separate corners,” Ray admitted.

Ray and Cusimano are still going strong and happily living child-free.

Nico Tortorella and Bethany Meyers

Longtime partners Nico Tortorella and fitness and lifestyle entrepreneur Bethany Meyers had been in a polyamorous relationship for more than a decade before getting married in 2018. And they continued to practice polyamory after getting hitched.

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While Tortorella and Meyers were trying to conceive, the Younger star told Alex Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast that they were only “having sex to get pregnant right now.” They added, “And I haven’t had sex with a dude in two years. I haven’t had sex with anyone except for my partner since February of 2020. Which is strange. We have never been this monogamous and straight in the 15 years that we’ve known each other. It’s been a f—–g process.”

The pair went on to have two children, a son born in 2023 and a daughter born in 2024.

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