Joy

While every love story has its sweet or unexpected elements, some couples' origin stories are surprising enough to makes you say, "Wow." Jamie Lee Curtis and her husband of 41 years, Christopher Guest, has one of those.

In an interview on The Drew Barrymore Show, Curtis opened up about how she and Guest fell in love in 1984, and how she knew she was going to marry him before she ever met him. In fact, she knew before she even knew his name.

In April of 1984, Curtis was sitting on a couch with her friend Debra Hill, who co-wrote and produced 'Halloween,' and they were looking at an issue of Rolling Stone.

"I opened the magazine, and there was a picture of three men with their arms around each other," Curtis said. It was the actors from the film This is Spinal Tap, dressed in their regular clothes. "And there was a guy on the end, and I went to Debra Hill, "Oh, huh. Interesting. I'm gonna marry that guy.'"

Hill told her that his name was Christ Guest, and he was an actor with Curtis' agency. Curtis called Guest's agent and left her number to pass along to him.

"And Chris did not call me," she told Barrymore.

Two months went by while Curtis dated someone else, who definitely wasn't "the one." One day, after taking that person to the airport, she picked up Melanie Griffith and her then-husband, and they all stopped at a restaurant in West Hollywood.

And wouldn't you know it, Guest was sitting just two tables away, facing Curtis. He waved. She waved back, embarrassed about his never calling her. Then, when he left, he stood up, shrugged his shoulders and waved again. Curtis did the same. Not a word was spoken between them. But the next day, he called her.

"That date was June 28, 1984," she told Barrymore. "We went out July 2nd. He was leaving for a year on Saturday Night Live on August 8th. I was starting the movie Perfect in Los Angeles on August 10th…so we are now on opposite coasts. We went back and forth every weekend. We got engaged September 13th. And we got married December 18th, that year."

"But," she adds. "That's crazy."

It does sound crazy, but Curtis and Guest have been married for 41 years, which is a successful marriage no matter how you slice it. That's not to say it's been a piece of cake, though.

“I don’t think we have an easy marriage," Curtis said in a 1991 interview with PEOPLE. "We have a difficult, but successful marriage.”

“Chris and I have a wonderful, complicated, imperfect life,” Curtis wrote later in an essay for Oprah in 2004. “And a very real marriage. I’ll never know why I thought we’d understand each other when I saw his photograph."

They say, "when you know, you know," but this story takes that trope to a whole other level. Most people take a while to know, and the vast majority have at least, you know, spoken to their partner before they realize they are the one. To pick a face out of a magazine and have that knowing is either a testament to the mysterious elements of life none of us can fully explain or a testament to Curtis and Guest's willingness to stick with it, no matter what.

Or maybe it's a little bit of both. In the lead-up to their 40th wedding anniversary in December 2024, Curtis shared the secret to a long-lasting marriage with Entertainment Tonight. "You don't leave," she said. "I'm also sober for a long time, and we have a phrase in recovery: 'If you stay on the bus, the scenery will change.' And that's marriage. If you stay on the bus, the scenery changes."

Every marriage is different, of course, but "you don't leave" is perhaps the most profoundly simple marriage longevity hack ever. Congrats to these two on 41 years of marriage, two kids, and two legendary careers in Hollywood.