28 Lesbian Couples in Hollywood With Our Favorite Love Stories

Jessica Betts & Niecy Nash-Betts

Niecy Nash surprised her fans when she married singer-songwriter Jessica Betts in 2020. But the Claws star wouldn’t describe her marriage as a “coming out of anywhere,” but a “going into” herself situation, she told People.

“I was not suppressing my sexuality my whole life,” she said to the media outlet after the wedding. “I love who I love. At one point in my life, I married twice [Don Nash, Jay Tucker] and I love those people. And today I love this person. I’ve done everything I wanted to do on my own terms and my own way. So my choice now in a partner has nothing to do with who I’ve always been. It’s a matter of who I am in this moment.”

Beanie Feldstein & Bonnie Chance Roberts

Newly married couple Beanie Feldstein and Bonnie Chance Roberts have a very Hollywood romance tale to tell because they fell in love on the set of the film, How to Build a Girl in 2018. Roberts was producing the movie, and of course, Feldstein was one of the stars.

Most recently, the two shared beautiful pictures from their wedding on Instagram. “Could never find the words to thank the angels below for giving us the wedding of our dreams,” Feldstein wrote. 

Rebel Wilson & Ramona Agruma

Lovebirds and new parents Ramona Agruma and Rebel Wilson may have the most 1990s rom-com meet-cute we’ve ever heard of, and we’re obsessed. In Oct 2022, the Pitch Perfect star told PEOPLE about their sweet courtship. “We spoke on the phone for weeks before meeting. And that was a really good way to get to know each other. It was a bit old-school in that sense — very romantic.”

On Feb 20, Wilson announced they’re engaged with some magical photos of her Disneyland proposal. Talking to PEOPLE following their big day, Wilson explained why the ring was from Tiffany & Co. “Our friend Hugh, who set us up, gave us Tiffany heart charms on our first-ever date in Los Angeles in late 2021,” Wilson recalled. “So it’s amazing to celebrate our engagement with a gorgeous Tiffany’s ring.” So sweet!

Amber Laign & Robin Roberts

Amber Laign and Robin Roberts’ love story has endured for 16 years, but it wasn’t until 2013 that the Good Morning America anchor came out publicly as a lesbian after a health battle with a rare blood disorder when she thanked her girlfriend on Facebook for sticking by her. 

In 2020, Laign celebrated their love last year in their 15th anniversary with photos from the time they’ve been together. “Having you by my side is a gift as we continue to navigate this thing called life. I drive you crazy….I know which is why I love you even more to this day,” she wrote on Instagram that Roberts regrammed. “You have the kindest heart and most beautiful soul than anyone I know. You have shown me time and time again to stay humble and to always treat others with the utmost respect as you never know what one might be going through.” 

Earlier this year, Roberts opened up on Good Morning America about the two finally tying the knot. “I’m saying ‘yes’ to marriage, we’re getting married this year,” the co-host shared. She continued, “It was something we had talked about but we had put it off, it is saying yes to that, and that next chapter.” Wishing the most amazing wedding for these two this year!

Jillian Michaels & DeShanna Marie Minuto

Jillian Michaels and DeShanna Marie Minuto started dating back in 2018, getting engaged in 2021. They ended up eloping earlier in 2022 in a private ceremony in Namibia. They revealed, per Page Six, that they plan on having “an official wedding celebration” in June 2023 in Venice, Italy.

In a previous interview with People, Michaels couldn’t help but gush over her now-wife, saying, “DeShanna is ‘all the things’ — beautiful, smart, funny, creative, quirky, passionate … I could run down the list of adjectives. Those characteristics obviously attract you to someone. But it’s the quality of their character that makes you think, ‘Thank God for this person laying next to me’ every night when you fall asleep.”

Stacy London & Cat Yezbak

In late 2019, Stacy London revealed she’s been in a serious relationship with a woman named Cat Yezbak on social media. They like to keep their relationship private because London said in her post, “I’ve had public relationships before and I don’t love that. But I want to be clear here that with Cat I felt I owed us the chance to be private since this is my first serious relationship with a woman and I’m sure there will be some hoo ha about that. But I would never hide her out of shame.” And we can honestly say, she’s never looked happier!

Hayley Kiyoko & Becca Tilley

Former Disney star and gay icon Hayley Kiyoko revealed she and former Bachelor contestant Becca Tilley have been dating since 2018. They wowed everyone by revealing their relationship earlier in 2022 with Kiyoko’s music video “For the Girls.”

While they keep their relationship details private, Tilley couldn’t help but gush about Kiyoko on her podcast called For the Girls, saying, “Hayley has really made me feel brave, and she was always like, ‘People love you and they want to see you happy.’ And I’m just so thankful for [our fans].”

Heather Turman & Heather Matarazzo

Princess Diaries star Heather Matarazzo and her relationship with her wife Heather Turman is super private, with not many details known about them. Matarazzo proposed to her back in early 2018, marrying 10 months later on Nov. 11, 2018. While their details are private, they’re so cute on social media!

Ellen DeGeneres & Portia de Rossi

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s love story took a while to unfold. They met in 2000 when de Rossi was still in the closet — but there was immediate chemistry. It took until 2004 when they reconnected at a photo shoot to realize this was true love.

“She took my breath away,” de Rossi told The Advocate in 2005. “That had never happened to me in my life, where I saw somebody and [experienced] all of those things you hear about in songs and read about in poetry. My knees were weak. It was amazing.”

The couple has been married since 2008.

Sarah Paulson & Holland Taylor

Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor have a 32-year-age gap, but that makes no difference to them. It took a decade for them to get together because Paulson was in a relationship with actress Cherry Jones prior to Taylor. They reconnected in 2015 after working on a PSA after which, Taylor slid into her Twitter DMs — and the rest is romantic history.

“If my life choices had to be predicted based on what was expected from me from a community on either side, that’s going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don’t want to feel that,” Paulson told The New York Times about not putting a label to her sexuality. “What I can say absolutely is that I am in love, and that person happens to be Holland Taylor.”

Megan Rapinoe & Sue Bird

Soccer player Megan Rapinoe and WNBA player Sue Bird have been dating for over five years, and in 2020, Rapinoe proposed:  “There was a look in her eye,” Bird tells GQ of that moment. “I could just sense it. I knew what was happening.”

While Rapinoe was engaged to someone else when they first met, it didn’t take long for her to realize there was something special there with Bird: “I was like, ‘Okay, don’t be a cliché lesbian, where you love this person when you first meet them’…But it just was immediately like, ‘Oh, this is home.'”

Ariana DeBose & Sue Makkoo

Costume designer Sue Makkoo met Academy Award-winning actress Ariana DeBose while working on Summer: The Donna Summer Musical together in 2018, and the couple soon made waves at the Oscars and beyond. After DeBose picked up her award for best supporting actress in West Side Story, Makkoo shared a sweet Instagram selfie of the couple with this caption: “What are your dreams made of? Thank you Academy for seeing her! We should all lean in to the things our lives are meant for..”

Glennon Doyle & Abby Wambach

If you’ve read Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, then you know well the story of how she met and fell in love with soccer star Abby Wambach. 

“Everything in me was like, there she is,” Doyle told podcast What’s Her Story of the day she first met Wambach. “Like just an absolute and total recognizing, even though I’ve never seen her before.”

“I was next to this children’s book writer, feeling like, well, I want to sit next to her [Glennon] for some reason. Why do I want to sit next to her?” Wambach adds. “This is weird. And then after dinner, we had to walk to the stage where the actual event was taking place. And in the literally three minutes it took us to get from the back room dinner table to the stage,I told Glen my whole story and she touched my arm and for sure that was like a lightning bolt for me. That shocked me.”

Fortune Feimster & Jacquelyn Smith

Comedian Fortune Feimster married her partner Jacquelyn Smith in 2020, two years after proposing, and shared details of the special day with People. 

“I was excited. We’ve been together for five-and-a-half years. If you don’t know who you’re marrying after five-and-a-half years, then you’re in trouble. So I knew it felt good, it felt right,” Feimster said. 

While they kept the ceremony small due to COVID-19 concerns, it was in part fears of marriage equality being overturned in this country that prompted them to have their ceremony without further ado. 

“We’re really thrilled and just so happy that we could do this. I do think it’s an important thing for people to know that this is something that means a lot to us,” Feimster shared. “We love each other and we wanted to be able to make this kind of commitment to each other like our friends have been able to make and our family. And to have so much support from people has meant a lot. We’re just really happy that we got to do this.”

Fiona Shaw & Sonali Deraniyagala

Actress Fiona Shaw married Dr. Sonali Deraniyagala, a Sri Lankan memoirist and economist, in 2018, after reading her moving story of losing her children, husband, and parents in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. 

“I understand the value of things by being with Sonali. She lives knowing that at any moment the world could end because she lost her world. It has brought me into land, I suppose, about lots of things; a lack of arbitrariness about life,” Shaw told Good Housekeeping in 2020. “I’m married to a very unusual person, but maybe it took a very unusual person to be willing to marry me.” 

Samira Wiley & Lauren Morelli

Samira Wiley and Lauren Morelli have Orange Is the New Black to thank for bringing them together — Wiley as an actress and Morelli as a writer for the Netflix show. 

“So much of falling in love with Lauren was her own coming-out story. For the first part of our relationship, it was more of a confidante kind of relationship where she was having lots of questions about who she was. A lot of the beginning was me being a therapist, sharing my own experiences. I came out much earlier than her – I was around 20,” Wiley told Cosmopolitan U.K. “Lauren is the most lovely person, and [we were] able to have that relationship blossom from being scared of what was happening in her own marriage to being on the other side and [realising], ‘Oh, this is more than this, we actually really love each other.’ ”

The couple married in 2017 and welcomed a daughter, George, in 2021. 

Raven-Symoné & Miranda Pearman-Maday

While Raven-Symoné and Miranda Pearman-Maday have kept many details about their courtship private, Pearman-Maday did reveal, via their YouTube channel, that they met “at a gay bar in West Hollywood” on a karaoke night that Symoné hosted somewhere around 2015. They surprised fans with a wedding in June 2020 in Debbie Allen’s backyard. 

“I got married to a woman who understands me from trigger to joy, from breakfast to midnight snack, from stage to home,” Symoné captioned the now-deleted Instagram post, via People. “I love you Mrs. Pearman-Maday! Let’s tear this world a new a**hole!!! I’s married NOW.”

The duo hopes to start a family in the near future. 

Jodie Foster & Alexandra Hedison

Jodie Foster and photographer Alexandra Hedison met in 2013 and were married a year later. But Hedison’s name might seem familiar to some because she was dating Ellen DeGeneres right before the talk show host hooked up with Portia de Rossi (and the timelines might have overlapped). 

But it doesn’t matter because everyone has moved on and is happily married. Hedison was seen giving the notoriously private Foster a shoutout on Instagram after she was nominated for a Golden Globe earlier this year. 

“Every day I’m a proud wife but today you get a special shout out in the remote land of IG,” she captioned the black-and-white image. “I’ll have to show you my phone for you to see this but still…I’m shouting from the rooftops. Congratulations to you, @taharrahimofficiel & everyone involved in this important film @themauritanian #goldenglobes photo by @brettglam.”

Kristen Stewart & Dylan Meyer

If there is any celebrity in Hollywood who is ultra-private, it’s Kristen Stewart. But since meeting screenwriter Dylan Meyer in 2019, she’s been more open about her love life to the press.

“The day that I met her, all bets were off,” Stewart recalled to Howard Stern in 2020. “I was like, ‘Where have I been and how have I not known you?’ She’s been, like, living in LA alongside my life somehow but not ever converging?”

During another appearance in late 2022, Stewart confirmed the two were headed to the altar. “We’re marrying, it’s happening,” the actress said. 

Wanda & Alex Sykes

Wanda and Alex Sykes met in 2006 on a ferry ride to Fire Island in New York and it was love at first sight. The couple married in 2008, which was also the year the comedian came out publicly at a Prop 8 rally in California to support marriage equality.

But their greatest joy together is their fraternal twins, Olivia and Lucas, 12, who were born in 2009. “I was like, oh, my God, what did we do?” Wanda joked to Vulture in 2016. “At one time I was contemplating taking one back. I was like, can we return one? I mean really, oh my gosh. I was thinking we can’t do this, we’re going to have to take one back.”

Kate McKinnon & Jackie Abbott

Let’s just say we don’t know much about Kate McKinnon’s girlfriend (and actress) Jackie Abbott and they both like it that way, thank you very much. The couple did attend the 2017 Primetime Emmys together (see a photo here via E! News), where McKinnon won Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Saturday Night Live. It was obviously a big night, so it’s wonderful they were able to celebrate with each other. 

As of 2021, they are still going strong, but still keeping their relationship out of the public eye. 

Jane Wagner & Lily Tomlin

Can we just applaud Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin for avoiding the Hollywood stereotype that relationships don’t last in the entertainment industry? These two have been together for 50 years and married since 2013. Their partnership isn’t just romantic, it’s also a creative endeavor — Wagner has written most of Tomlin’s characters and comedy specials. But really this was a love match from their first hello.

“A friend brought her to my hotel room,” Tomlin explained to Variety, “and I tell you, in two minutes, I fell in love with her. 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.”

Jennifer Cheyne & Jane Lynch

Jennifer Cheyne and former Glee star Jane Lynch circled back to each other around 2016 after dating in the early 2000s. This time around the relationship was smooth sailing because Lynch explained to Parade that they were “very different people now” over a decade later.

“We don’t have the same insecurities we used to have,” she said. “We live very peacefully. We have our own routines and separate spaces to retreat to within our home, but then we’ll have coffee together in the morning and meet for a meal.”

Christine Marinoni & Cynthia Nixon

What’s inspiring about Christine Marinoni and Cynthia Nixon’s relationship is how it blossomed out of their shared interests in activism. Marinoni was an LGBTQ + advocate and a former employee at the Department of Education in New York. The two fell in love in 2004, and their political work has only evolved from there with Nixon running for governor of New York in 2018.

Marinoni gave birth to their son, Max, in 2011 and the couple married in 2012. They also raised Nixon’s children from her partnership with Danny Mozes, sons Samuel, 24 and Charles, 18.

“Falling in love with my wife was one of the great delights and surprises of my life, but it didn’t seem like I became a whole new person, or like some door had been unlocked,” Nixon told the U.K.’s Attitude. “It was like: ‘I have fallen in love with different people in my life and they’ve all been men before. Now this is a woman and she is amazing.’” 

Melissa Etheridge & Linda Wallem

Some of the strongest marriages in Hollywood happen when you marry your best friend. That’s what happened to Melissa Etheridge and writer Linda Wallem, whose friendship turned into a marriage. After a decade of being BFFs, Wallem moved into Etheridge’s household while she was going through a brutal divorce with actress Tammy Lynn Michaels. Things turned romantic about six months into the move and by 2010, they knew it was the real deal. 

“One day, I realized, ‘Oh my gosh. She is my partner. She’s doing everything you would want in a partner. Why not?’ But I fell in love with her in a very different way,” Etheridge told Variety. “That’s why it’s really kind of hard to explain, more than I’ve ever fallen in love with anybody.”

The couple has been married since 2014.

Sophie Huber & Cherry Jones

Handmaid’s Tale actress Cherry Jones found a match in her then-neighbor, screenwriter Sophie Huber, who was living in an apartment on the Los Angeles property Jones bought. Several years of friendship turned into a full-blown romance and a walk down the aisle in 2015. They also enjoy supporting each other’s careers, but they currently have no plans to work together. 

“I’ll be on the porch, she’ll send me pages to read and then we talk about it,” Jones told Closer Weekly. “I feel like she’s including me, so that’s been a lot of fun.”

Stephanie Allynne & Tig Notaro

It took comedian Tig Notaro’s life to fall apart in order for her to find true happiness. After losing her mother and battling a rare infection and then, breast cancer, Notaro was thrilled to connect with actress Stephanie Allynne while working on the movie, In a World, in 2013. 

“Everything about her felt right. I knew I liked her, I knew I cared about her and that sent me into an identity crisis spiral,” Allynne explained to People about falling in love with Notaro after previously dating men. “I felt the need to label myself, was I gay? was I bi? Was I still straight? was I ever straight? etc. It took me six months to realize those labels were ridiculous. Once I was able to own my true feelings it was all easy and beautiful. I now don’t believe in the labels.”

The couple married in 2015 and welcomed twins, Max and Finn, via surrogate in 2016. 

Catherine Shepherd & Brandi Carlile

Catherine Shepherd and Brandi Carlile met back in 2009, getting engaged back in June 2012. They married only three months later.

“We met through our activism and interest in charity. We communicated for about a year, and the entire time I thought I was talking to somebody who was 65. It was an interesting way to fall in love,” she said to Rolling Stone about when they first started talking.