Even in the most stable environment, it’s hard to maintain a relationship that moves from high school to the real world.
Now imagine doing it as a celebrity.
Nevertheless, these 19 couples all met as high schoolers (or in some cases, even earlier), and made it work for years after, even if not all of them are still together today.
Here are 19 celebrity couples who met back when they were just regular teenagers.
Jalen Brunson and Ali Marks
The Knicks superstar has been dating his wife, Ali Marks, since high school — their 2015 prom photo is still on his Instagram, captioned, “Went to prom with the best date anyone could ask for.”
They got engaged in 2022 and married in 2023.
“She’s always been by my side and I’m lucky to have her,” Brunson told People after the big day.
In a nod to their long relationship, Marks wore her prom dress as her second look at the wedding.
They welcomed their first child, Jordyn, in 2024.
Patrick and Brittany Mahomes
The 2023 Super Bowl champion has been with Brittany, his now-wife, since they were classmates in Tyler, Texas.
In 2020, Patrick proposed to Brittany, captioning an Instagram post with “#RingSZN.” A few days later, the couple revealed they were expecting their first child together. Their daughter, Sterling, was born in February 2021.
They married in March 2022. Their second child, a boy named Patrick “Bronze” Lavon Mahomes III, was born in November 2022. Their third baby, Golden, was born in January 2025.
Brittany and Sterling were at the stadium to watch the Chiefs quarterback win his second Super Bowl in February 2023.
Snoop Dogg and Shante Broadus
Their first son, Cordé, was born in 1994, and they were married three years later in 1997. Snoop even shared an adorable throwback shot of the two at prom on Instagram. The ups and downs of their marriage were all documented on their reality TV show, “Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood.”
The couple filed for divorce in 2004, but reconciled and renewed their vows in 2008.
According to VH1, Snoop told Queen Latifah in 2013 that “[he] had no understanding of how I was hurting her and how I was betraying myself, until I [realized] I need to love this woman who loves me and had my kids. [I needed to] put my life in perspective and let my music and my business become secondary.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Vanessa Nadal
Miranda and Nadal attended the same New York City high school, but they never actually spoke — though that didn’t stop Miranda from developing a crush on his future wife.
“She was gorgeous and I’m famously bad at talking to women I find attractive. I have a total lack of game,” Miranda told The New York Times in 2010.
They reconnected on Facebook years later, after they both graduated from college. They tied the knot in September 2010. They now have two sons.
Jeff Daniels and Kathleen Treado
Daniels and Treado grew up in Chelsea, Michigan, and met in high school. They’ve been together ever since. Throughout his highly successful career, the couple still call Chelsea their home, and they raised their three kids there.
In 2014, Daniels told MLive about why he chose to stay close to home rather than move out to industry hubs Los Angeles or New York City, saying, “[Chelsea] was home. Kathleen and I had both been raised here; good enough for us, good enough for them.”
LeBron James and Savannah Brinson
Brinson told Harper’s Bazaar in 2010 about their first date at Outback, calling it “basic,” but she shared that it was also when she knew he loved her.
“I knew he loved me when I left my leftovers from dinner in his car,” Brinson said. “I’d totally forgotten about them, and he brought them to me. I think he just wanted another excuse to come and see me.”
Brinson became pregnant with their first child, Bronny, while she was still in high school, and she was nervous that it would derail their lives, but James assured her that everything would be OK.
James finally proposed to his longtime girlfriend in 2011, after 10 years of dating, per the Los Angeles Times. They tied the knot in 2014. They also had two more kids.
LL Cool J and Simone Smith
LL Cool J shared the story of how he met his wife during an interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
The rapper told Kimmel in 2012 that he “was just 19, something like that,” when he was driving down the block on Easter Sunday. His friend asked him if he wanted to meet one of his friend’s cousins, and once he got a look at Smith, he told his friend, “Oh yeah, I’ll meet your cousin.”
Smith recalled she was 17 years old when they met. The pair married in 1995 after dating for 8 years, and they have 4 kids together.
Bono and Ali Hewson
Bono and Hewson met when they were teenagers at school. Hewson played hard to get, since she didn’t want to be known as “just another of Bono’s girls,” but eventually his pursuit of her was successful.
Their first date culminated with him walking her to the bus stop, per the Huffington Post.
The U2 star has called their relationship “a magic carpet ride.” She “sees me as a figure of amusement,” said Bono while speaking to The Sun.
Kendrick Lamar and Whitney Alford
The “Not Like Us” rapper is pretty private about his personal life, but we know that he met his fiancée when they were both high schoolers in Compton, California, according to Billboard.
“She’s been here since day one,” Lamar said of Alford in a 2014 New York Times Magazine profile.
They got engaged in 2015 and have two children together. The entire family appears on the cover of his fifth album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” in 2022.
Steph and Ayesha Curry
Even though they’re basketball’s golden couple, Ayesha had never even attended a game until she was 19 — five years after she met her future-husband Steph, ABC News reported.
The two met as teenagers in Charlotte, North Carolina. They never officially dated when they were that young, but according to Ayesha, they’d talk on the phone sometimes. “It was that shy middle school, high school stuff,” she said.
When the basketball star was flown out to Los Angeles for the ESPY Awards, his first thought was of his childhood crush. They met up, saw the sights, and the rest is history.
Now, he’s widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players in the game, and she’s turned herself into a brand. Ayesha has written cookbooks, opened a barbecue restaurant, hosted a cooking show on the Food Network called “Ayesha’s Home Kitchen,” and founded a skincare brand called Sweet July.
They welcomed their fourth child in 2024.
Jon Bon Jovi and Dorothea Hurley
People reported the couple met at Sayreville War Memorial High School in their New Jersey hometown, and have been together ever since. They have four kids together.
At the peak of Bon Jovi’s fame in 1989, the couple decided to elope in Las Vegas and were married by an Elvis impersonator. And though Bon Jovi has die-hard fans, Hurley isn’t concerned.
“I think it’s great they love the music,” she told People in 2016.
Ron Howard and Cheryl Alley
Even though getting married young (they were both 21) might seem like a risky endeavor, these two have beaten the odds, successfully navigating Hollywood and parenthood.
“I felt really lucky when we met. It’s crazy — we were teenagers, it shouldn’t have worked. We got married young, that shouldn’t have worked either, and yet it really and truly has,” Howard told the Huffington Post about his decades-long marriage to Alley in 2013.
And now their kids are famous, too — their daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, starred in the “Jurassic World” franchise and regularly directs episodes of the “Star Wars” TV shows.
Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins
While they had known each other since they were kids (since first grade, to be exact, according to Country Living), Rhett and Akins didn’t start dating until they were teenagers — and it didn’t stick at first. The two broke up soon after, and actually almost both married other people, according to People.
But thankfully (for Rhett), Akins broke up with her boyfriend, and Rhett “moved in for the kill.” They dated for six months and married in 2013, when they were both 22. They now have four daughters and a son, born in 2026.
Ja Rule and Aisha Atkins
According to Ja Rule, the two have been together since middle school. He told Ebony magazine in 2002 that “the first time I met her I was getting off the school bus, and she was the new girl in school.”
The couple were married in 2001 and have three kids together.
Besides dealing with the normal issues that couples go through and constantly being scrutinized by the media, they also had to spend almost two years apart while Ja Rule was in prison for tax evasion and illegal gun possession. He was released in 2013, per TMZ.
Mariano and Clara Rivera
Famed baseball player Rivera met his wife in elementary school, and the pair have been together ever since, The New York Times reported.
They were married in Panama in 1991, and they lived there until 2000, when they moved to Westchester County, New York.
Eminem and Kim Scott
Their long and tumultuous relationship began when they were just kids.
Even if you have just cursory knowledge about Eminem, you know about Kim, the subject of many of the rapper’s most disturbing songs, like “Kim,” and “’97 Bonnie and Clyde.”
The two met when they were just kids (she was 13 and he was 15). Kim and her twin, Dawn, had previously run away from an allegedly abusive home, and eventually began living with Eminem and his mother.
In 1995, they welcomed their daughter Hailie (the subject of more Eminem songs), and were married in 1999.
But things quickly went downhill — Eminem was accused of pistol-whipping a man he claimed he saw kissing his wife, according to NME. The charge was dropped in favor of a reduced charge of carrying a concealed weapon, and he was sentenced to two years’ probation. The couple divorced in 2001.
Five years later, they shocked the world and remarried. But just three months after that, the rapper filed for divorce. Their second divorce was finalized in 2006, per People.
Though Eminem built his brand around graphic songs, he apologized to his former wife on the track “Bad Husband” from his 2017 album, “Revival.”
Joey Fatone and Kelly Baldwin
Fatone and Baldwin had been dating for 10 years and had a daughter together in 2001 before they were married in 2004, per People. Their second daughter was born in 2010.
Their relationship was plagued with rumors of infidelity from outlets such as Page Six, reaching a high in 2013 after his appearances on two seasons of “Dancing with the Stars.” At the time, when Baldwin was asked for a comment, she simply responded, “I don’t really want to talk about this.”
In 2020, Fatone confirmed to Us Weekly that they were getting divorced.
Robin Thicke and Paula Patton
Thicke and Patton’s 21-year-long relationship began when they were 16.
Thicke told Essence in 2011 that their relationship began when they were teenagers, and Patton was “the president of the Black student union and [Thicke] was just a silly white boy.”
But they had actually met a year prior at a teen club where, according to Thicke, he serenaded his future wife with the Stevie Wonder song “Jungle Fever.”
They were together for 21 years and married for nine before filing for divorce in 2014 and engaging in a particularly nasty custody battle for their son, Julian.
Misha Collins and Victoria Vantoch
Collins and Vantoch got married in 2001, though they met way back in high school — Collins was the only boy in one of Vantoch’s English classes.
The two separated at some point before 2021. He acknowledged the split in the author’s note in his poetry book, “Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You.”
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