It sounds like something out of a fanfiction — you fall in love with a beautiful stranger who just so happens to be famous. While it sounds more like a trope than true-to-life, it’s surprisingly more common than you’d think!
Here are 19 celebs whose partners had no idea they were famous:
1.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s husband, fellow actor Peter Sarsgaard, told People, “I met Maggie at a dinner [in 2001], and I didn’t even know she was an actress. I knew nothing about her, but it was instant. Then Secretary came out maybe six months later, and I was like, ‘Oh, whoa. Okay. She’s not like any other actress in the world.'”
2.
Olivia Munn and NFL player Aaron Rodgers dated from 2014-2017, but she “had no idea” who he was at first. She told Conan, “When I met him, I said, ‘So what do you do?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I play football.’ And I go, ‘Cool. What college?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, no. I play professional.’ And I was like, ‘Cool, what position?’ He’s like, ‘Quarterback.’ ‘Cool.’ That was kind of it, not knowing that he’s, you know, Super Bowl MVP or any of those things, but all I saw was that he was, like, really attractive. I didn’t really care what he did. I was like, ‘You are such a big man!'”
3.
Likewise, Aaron Rodgers’s ex-fiancé, Shailene Woodley, whom he was got engaged to in 2021 but broke up with in 2022, wasn’t really familiar with his career when they first met. She told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, “I never thought I’d be engaged to someone who threw balls for a living. I never thought as a little girl, ‘Yeah, when I grow up, I’m going to marry someone who throws balls, yeah!’ But he’s really just so good at it, and I’m very impressed… Before I met him, I’d never seen one football game before.”
She continued, “I didn’t really grow up with sports, especially American sports. It was never really on my radar. When we met, also, I knew he was a football guy, but I didn’t know what kind of a football guy he was… I don’t know him as a football guy. I know him as, like, the nerd who wants to host Jeopardy. … He just happens to also be very good at sports.”
4.
Tom Pelphrey didn’t realize that his fiancé, Kaley Cuoco, starred in The Big Bang Theory — which was extremely popular, long-running, and multi-award winning — until his mom’s partner kept calling her by her character’s name. He actually “hadn’t seen Kaley in anything” because he “was living in upstate New York, on a dirt road, in the middle of the woods, without much Wi-Fi” before they met.
Tom told W magazine, “When I first brought Kaley to New Jersey to meet my family and friends, my mom’s partner — who apparently was a Big Bang Theory fan — was there, and he kept calling her Penny. I had no clue what was going on. So I pulled Kaley aside, like, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand what’s happening. Why does he keep calling you Penny?’ She’s like, ‘That’s my character in The Big Bang Theory.’ I was completely unaware. I’ve watched a few episodes with her since, and, obviously, she’s fantastic.”
5.
When Richard Gere and his wife, publicist and political activist Alejandra Gere, first crossed paths, she knew he was famous, but she mistook him for a different celebrity! He told Elle Spain, “She had no idea who I was when we met. None. She didn’t see movies, which was great. I was very happy about that.” Alejandra cut in, “No, wait a minute. Richard, I knew who you were. I didn’t see many of your movies.” He added, “She thought I was George Clooney, but other than that, she knew exactly who I was.”
6.
In 1976, Henry Winkler and his wife, publicist Stacey Weitzman, met at a Beverly hills clothing store. He told People, “She was wearing purple parachute pants, and she had red hair, and without her even saying a word, I thought, ‘Woah, beautiful woman standing in front of me.’ I came back to the store the next week, and [she] was there. And within 10 minutes, I learned how strong she is. I said, ‘Would you like to go for a soda? I just have to make a quick stop to buy a wedding gift.’ And she said, ‘I am not a gift service!’ But then she changed her mind, and we went across the street and had ginger ales.”
At the time, Henry was in his third season of starring as Fonzie on Happy Days, but Stacey had no clue. He told AARP Magazine, “She wanted to go to the movies. And I told her that might be difficult. She wanted to know why. I said, ‘I don’t know how to describe it to you.’ When we got to the theater, I told her we should sit in the back. She didn’t understand, so we sat in the middle of the theater. And the entire theater came over and said hello. And Stacey said, ‘Oh!'”
7.
Simone Biles met her husband, NFL player Jonathan Owens, on the celebrity dating app Raya. He “honestly didn’t know who she was” because he “never really watched gymnastics before [he] first started talking to her.” On Simone’s Facebook Watch docuseries, he said, “That’s how I would tell people, and they’re like, ‘Simone Biles?! You for real, the gymnast?!’ And I’m like, ‘Man, she’s good like that?!’ Like I didn’t [know].”
8.
Serena Williams first met her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, when he sat at the breakfast table next to hers at a hotel in Italy. Annoyed that he didn’t pick one of the many empty tables further away, one of her friends told him he shouldn’t sit there because there was a rat. She told Vanity Fair, “We were trying to get him to move and get out of there. He kind of refuses, and he looks at us. And he’s like, ‘Is there really a rat here?’ ‘No, we just don’t want you sitting there. We’re going to use that table.’ ‘I’m from Brooklyn. I see rats all the time.’ ‘Oh, you’re not afraid of rats?’ ‘No.'” At that moment, Alexis was “98 percent sure” who she was.
However, he’d “never watched a match on television or in real life.” He told VF, “It was literally the sport — even if ESPN was announcing tennis updates, I would just zone out… I really had no respect for tennis.” They talked about the tech conference he was in town to speak at, and though she didn’t know what Reddit was, she pretended she did and claimed she’d been on it that very morning. They changed topics to her website, which he offered to help with. Her agent invited him to that night’s tennis match, and he and Serena better connected when she later invited him to another match in Paris.
9.
Shaun White “actually didn’t know anything about” his fiancé, Nina Dobrev, when they both presented at an event in Florida in 2019. Afterwards, they grabbed food together. He told People, “The place was packed. And she was like, ‘Let me go see if I can get a table.'”
As she spoke with the blushing host, Shaun wondered to himself if Nina had told her, “There’s an old gold medalist over there who wants a table.” However, when a group of employees walked over, they asked, “Can we get a photo … with her?” Shaun said, “And I was like, ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’ It was actually really funny.”
10.
When Kristen Bell first met her husband, Dax Shepard, at a mutual friend’s birthday dinner, he’d recently risen to fame on Punk’d. However, unaware of who he was, she wondered, “Is that one of the guys from Jackass or something?”
On Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist, she said, “The only thing I remember is that he talked so much… There were no sparks whatsoever… Two weeks later, we both met at a hockey game… We saw each other…started to flirt. Then a day after that, I get a text that says, ‘Hi, my name is Dax. I violated your privacy and got your number from Shauna [Robertson]. How do you feel about that?’ And I was like, ‘Excuse me? You sound stimulating.'”
11.
Model and designer Camila Alves knew who Matthew McConaughey was and had seen his movies, but when he came into the West Hollywood club where she was hanging out, she didn’t recognize him. She told Access Hollywood, “We had two interactions at the bar. The first interaction, I did not know who he was. At the time, he had a really long beard, and he had this Rasta hat. He was all covered up, and I didn’t really realize who he was.”
However, she realized who he was after spotting Lance Armstrong, Matthew’s close friend at the time. She continued, “Lance came to talk to me. You knew they were always together, so I’m like, OK, I’m outta here. I’m going to the other side of the room!”
Even though she moved away, she caught his eye. Matthew told The Howard Stern Show, “So I’m healthily single at a club on Sunset. I’m not even a club guy, but this night I was a club guy. And I’m making margaritas at the end of the table, and this figure moves across the room, and I remember to myself, I go, ‘What is that?’ I didn’t say, ‘Who is that?’ I said ‘What is that?’ …She sits down, and I can’t get my eyes off her, and I’m waving, trying to get [her attention], ‘Hey, over there!’ Finally catch her eye, and as soon as she looks at me, the Jiminy Cricket in me says, ‘Boy, get off your ass, this is not the type of woman you call across the room.’ I go over and introduce myself. I do the smart thing of inviting her and her friends over.”
12.
Alexa PenaVega and her husband, Big Time Rush member Carlos PenaVega, met at a Bible study at their mutual friend’s house. Their friend had invited Alexa, but Carlos had actually been invited by an ex he was hoping to rekindle a relationship with. Carlos told The War Cry, “I had known of Alexa, but she was just ‘that chick from Spy Kids.’ She had no idea who I was, though, and when we first met, I was completely smitten. I became so nervous I actually started quoting Spy Kids, which did not work because she told our mutual friend I was so weird.”
Their friend had actually been trying to get them to meet for years! Alexa said, “It was our mutual friend, Andrew, who invited us. I’ve known him since I was 13 years old, and Carlos has known him since he was 18, and all this time, Andrew would tell us that we were very compatible. He would always say things like, ‘You have to meet. You two just have to meet,’ but the timing never worked out. We were either in other relationships or just not ready to date at all. So, Andrew had invited me to his Bible study quite a few times. It was a Bible study at his house that he led, and just this one particular time, I decided, ‘You know what? I’ll go check it out,’ and this is after a couple years of him having this Bible study, that I finally decided to go. It just so happened to be the night Carlos showed up as well.”
13.
Hairdresser Danielle Jonas “didn’t know who the Jonas Brothers were” when she met her husband, Kevin Jonas, on a family vacation in the Bahamas in 2007. After they first crossed paths, he saw her walking down the beach, a flower tucked in her hair, and decided to pursue a relationship with her.
During his best man’s toast at their 2007 wedding, Kevin’s brother Joe reportedly said, “I’m the one responsible for getting them together. I hit on Danielle first.”
14.
Lena Dunham’s husband, musician Luis Felber, “had to Google” her before their blind date. He told The Sunday Times, “Then I went on her Instagram, and I saw her dancing to a song called ‘Red Hot Pussy’ in her garden in LA. Lena puts herself out there in a really special way. That was all I had to go on at the time.”
15.
Rapper Cordae dated Naomi Osaka from 2019-2025, but, when they met at an LA Clippers basketball game, he wasn’t aware she was a huge tennis star. He told GQ, “It’s not my sport. If you asked me about tennis, before being immersed in it because of Naomi, I could only give you Venus and Serena Williams, you know? Because they’re just a part of the culture.”
16.
Julianna Marguilies was already known for her starring role on ER when she met her husband, attorney Keith Lieberthal. She told People, “He honestly didn’t know who I was. I mean, if he had seen my work, he didn’t know. He was in law school. I was like, ‘There’s a couple movies I don’t want you to see.'”
17.
Alfonso Ribeiro met his wife, blogger Angela Unkrich, at a hotel in Beverly Hills. In a joint interview, she told Yahoo Lifestyle, “I called him my stalker. I didn’t know who he was at the time. He told me he was a director, which you were. And I was very much in the ‘I don’t want to date anyone in entertainment’ [phase].”
After he made “first, second, third moves,” she agreed to go out with him and made a reservation at a restaurant. However, unbeknownst to him, she actually planned to ditch the date early so she could go home and watch the new Grey’s Anatomy. She said, “I don’t think it was more than 10 minutes that went by, and I was like, ‘Huh, he’s different than I thought.'”
18.
Lily Allen and her husband, David Harbour, whom she separated from in 2025, met when they matched on Raya. She told the Jonathan Ross Show, “It was the first time I’d been on this dating app. I was scrolling through and landed on David’s profile and pressed accept. I didn’t know who he was. I thought he was just, like, a sexy policeman from a reality TV show. He was wearing a policeman’s uniform. It was a still from Stranger Things. I’d never seen Stranger Things.”
19.
And finally, while Michael Cera was promoting Arrested Development in Paris, he met his wife, Nadine Cera, in a bar. In Paris to study, she had no clue who Michael was. He told the Guardian, “We trip out about that all the time. It’s completely unlikely that we would ever meet… She thought I was Swedish until we spoke. I didn’t know if she would speak English, and if we would even have a chance to talk, and it was very lucky that she did because we wouldn’t have a son, we wouldn’t have a relationship.”
Do you know of any other celebs whose partners didn’t know they were famous? Tell us in the comments!
