There are some married couples who just built a life together, and then there are those who managed to squeeze in a whole bunch of cool.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
Most people know that Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were glamorous, but really, that’s only half the story. The couple met while working in theater in the 1950s and married in 1958. Somehow, they made a 50-year Hollywood marriage look almost normal, and cool, too.
Newman directed Woodward in Rachel, Rachel. The pair kept working together, although they did something many Hollywood couples fail to do, and that’s avoid becoming a permanent publicity act. They even created the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for seriously ill children.
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
The romance between Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash is the stuff of legend. You can’t beat his onstage proposal to her in 1968, after all. She said yes, of course. The pair had actually met years earlier at the Grand Ole Opry, but the music kept pulling them back together.Â
June actually co-wrote ‘Ring of Fire,’ and her duet with Johnny, titled ‘Jackson,’ won a Grammy. Because, it seems, that even the Recording Academy couldn’t deny how well the pair of them worked together.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King
It’s hard to imagine a time before Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King were doing speeches. But it existed. Yes, they were once two young people in Boston. He was studying theology, and she was training as a classical singer.
The couple married in Alabama in 1953, and it didn’t take long for Coretta to join the civil rights movement, although she did in her own way. She performed freedom concerts. Sadly, their love story was over way too quickly, as Martin was assassinated in 1968.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
Lucille Ball was the kind of woman who was willing to fight for her relationship. Ironically, she had to convince television executives that audiences would accept Desi Arnaz as her on-screen husband. He already was in real life.
They decided to take the act on tour and prove it worked. Funnily enough, it did. I Love Lucy followed in 1951, and it became such a hit that basically every major production company tried to copy the three-camera sitcom format afterward. Their love changed TV history.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Dinner and sightseeing apparently weren’t enough for John Lennon and Yoko Ono. No, after the pair married in 1969, they actually asked reporters into their hotel room as part of a weeklong Bed-In for Peace. Yes, they were a couple that used their relationship for charity.
They repeated the idea later on with the song, ‘Give Peace a Chance,’ and they made albums together. They also made films and odd bits of public art that sure were confusing. But honestly, that was part of the appeal of this couple, they were just that unique.
Bob and Elizabeth Dole
Politics has a way of ruining some relationships, but not for Bob and Elizabeth Dole. They had the rare kind of marriage where either person could walk into a room and be the main political figure. Bob worked for decades in Congress and became Senate majority leader.
He also ran for president in 1996. Elizabeth was busy, too, running the American Red Cross and serving as transportation and labor secretary. She also represented North Carolina in the Senate. The couple that does politics together, stays together, apparently.
George Burns and Gracie Allen
George Burns was smart enough to notice that Gracie Allen was getting the bigger laughs. But rather than getting bitter or trying to fight it, he changed the act. He became her straight man. That decision took them to all sorts of places, including radio and movies.
So it was no surprise that they got married in 1926. The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show gave them the opportunity to play exaggerated versions of themselves at home. It might’ve been played up for laughs, but one thing was clear. They were a seriously cool couple.
Julia Child and Paul Child
The story of how Julia Child and Paul Child met sounds like something from a novel. It was totally real, however. They met while working for an American intelligence agency during World War II and married in 1946. They moved to France for Paul’s diplomatic career.
It was there that Julia got introduced to French food, and her passion for cooking really took off. Julia became the famous one. Still, their life together was full of food and art, with just the right dash of romance, too.
Jackie Robinson and Rachel Robinson
Baseball history put Jackie and Rachel Robinson under a national spotlight, and it all started when they met at UCLA. They married in 1946, just a year before Jackie joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. He broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier like never before.
Rachel had to deal with threats and hostile crowds, however, which led to a great strain while raising their family. But they stuck together through it all. She actually built a major career of her own as a nurse and civil-rights worker.
Robert and Clara Schumann
Marriage was harder for Robert and Clara Schumann than it should’ve been. Not because of anything they did, but because they had to go to court to make their marriage legal. Clara’s father opposed the match. Yet love won out, and the couple won their case.
Robert worked constantly on his music during their early years, although Clara wasn’t just a housewife or anything. She performed across Europe and promoted his work. She also wrote music of her own and supported their household through concerts. What a power couple.
David Bowie and Iman
You’d be surprised at how much David Bowie and Iman managed to keep private. He was a rock star, she was an international model, yet they were able to keep so much about their marriage under wraps. They were undeniably cool, though.
They met at a dinner party in Los Angeles in 1990 and married in Switzerland. The two raised their daughter in New York and mostly avoided turning their family life into a performance. It turns out, you can be famous and low-key at the same time.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
One thing about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton was that a single marriage apparently wasn’t enough. Definitely not. They met while filming Cleopatra in Rome and married in Montreal in 1964. 10 years later, they divorced. Then they tried the whole thing again.
The second marriage lasted less than a year, but it seems there was no bad blood because they made eleven movies together. It was probably exhausting. Yet nobody could call them boring, far from it, in fact.
Clark Gable and Carole Lombard
It’s easy to think that Hollywood stars like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard would have an equally glamorous life together. It wasn’t, though. It was surprisingly normal, in fact, since they had a ranch together, where they kept horses and chickens.
They seemed to genuinely prefer that world to Hollywood parties, although their romance was short-lived. Lombard’s plane crashed in 1942 while she was returning from a war-bond trip. Their marriage ended before it had even reached three years.
Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne
It makes sense that writing was such a big part of this marriage. It’s not like Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne could’ve worked on anything else together, you know. They passed drafts back and forth at home and sometimes argued over individual lines.
That feels about right for such a literary couple. They worked on multiple films together during their nearly 40-year marriage, including A Star Is Born and Up Close & Personal.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
15 marriage laws from history that ruined women’s lives
Besides teaching you a few history lessons, these 15 marriage laws from around the world will show you how a woman’s life was broken piece by piece in the name of marriage.
