Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman have been married for 18 years, and have shared how they’ve made their long-lasting relationship work along the way.
The powerhouse couple have a few rules to ensure their communication is aligned, but they refuse to talk over text messages and opt for phone calls and in-person discussions.
Kidman and Urban aren’t the only pair with unconventional marriage rules in Hollywood. Gwyneth Paltrow and husband Brad Falchuk didn’t live together after they were hitched, while Rachael Ray and her husband, John Cusimano, get into “screaming matches” as a healthy means of conflict resolution, and Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen make sure to reconnect with each other at an unusual hour.
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Nicole Kidman, Ted Danson and Rachel Ray keep their marriages hot with unconventional rules. (Getty Images)
The “Babygirl” actress and her country star husband decided from the beginning of their relationship that they would only communicate by voice, Kidman told Parade magazine.
“We don’t text,” Kidman said. “We call. We’ve done this since the very beginning. The reason it started at the beginning was because I didn’t know how to text, and it just kind of worked for us. So, now we don’t.
“We just do voice to voice or skin to skin, as we always say. We talk all the time, and we FaceTime, but we just don’t text because I feel like texting can be misrepresentative at times.
Kidman and Urban rely on “skin to skin” and voice calls in their relationship. (Angela Weiss)
“And I’ve had the thing where I reread texts, and I’m like, “What does that mean?” and then read it to somebody and go ‘Can you interpret that?’ I don’t want that between my lover and I.”
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“We don’t text. We call. We’ve done this since the very beginning. The reason it started at the beginning was because I didn’t know how to text, and it just kind of worked for us. So now we don’t.”
Besides their no-texting rule, their secret to a lasting marriage is easy: “Not having secrets,” Kidman said.
“We never tell anybody any advice about their relationship or think that we have a secret. We just approach it with humility and hope, and just really love hanging out. I mean it’s that simple. We love spending time together. We have a lot of fun together and we just choose each other. If there is one person I can hang out with, it’s him and the girls, and that’s it.”
Keith and Nicole have been married for 18 years and have two daughters together. (Dimitrios Kambouris)
Rachael Ray and her husband, musician and entertainment lawyer John Cusimano, have their own ways of keeping the love going strong after 19 years of marriage.
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“I am very wildly, wildly, wildly lucky that I have my husband,” the former Food Network star said on the first episode of her new podcast, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” “But he understands I need my space. He needs his space.”
Space and time apart are both non-negotiable for the celebrity chef and her husband.
Rachael Ray and husband John Cusimano have a few unconventional marriage rules. (Jamie McCarthy)
The couple met through a mutual friend in 2001. (Stephen Lovekin)
“It’s very hard, especially for hot-tempered or creative or vociferous, loud people to be able to just calm it down,” Ray told her guest, Jenny Mollen. “John and I don’t calm it down ever. We have huge screaming matches all the time, but I think that’s healthy. I really do. And I don’t trust people that are too quiet.
“Too quiet freaks me out. I prefer that you tell me what you think when you think it, and let’s just get it all out there.”
Ray and Cusimano have a unique way of making up after an argument, too.
“John and I don’t calm it down ever. We have huge screaming matches all the time, but I think that’s healthy. I really do. And I don’t trust people that are too quiet.”
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“I don’t know that we ever apologize to each other,” the “30 Minute Meals” star said. “Eventually, I pat him on his a–, or he kisses me on the head, and that’s just sort of it. That’s the apology. It’s just sort of understood. ‘I still like your a–. I still like your head.’ It’s kind of in that zone.”
Ted Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen know how to make their almost 30-year marriage last: morning dates.
The couple make the most of their time together in the early hours instead of spending late nights out.
Ted Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen have early morning dates. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
“Date nights are kind of, at my age, date early bird specials,” Danson, 76, told People magazine. “The most fun is the early mornings, 4:30 in the morning, coffee in bed, playing Wordle, Connections, and Spelling Bee, talking and laughing and sharing.”
He added, “To both of us, it’s like heaven on Earth.”
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Danson refuses to let their busy work schedules interrupt their special time together, even if they’re in different locations.
“Even if she’s working in a different time zone, we will wake up in time to be able to play our games and have coffee over the phone,” he said.
When Gwyneth Paltrow married producer Brad Falchuk in September 2018, the couple retreated to their own separate homes after the wedding.
Gwyneth Paltrow met Brad Falchuk while working on an episode of “Glee” in 2010. (Gregg DeGuire)
One year later, they decided it was finally time to make their union official under one roof and move in together.
At the beginning of their marriage, the Academy Award-winning actress and her “intimacy teacher” approved an arrangement where the couple would spend three nights per week at their own homes before living together at Paltrow’s home the remaining four nights.
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“Oh, all my married friends say that the way we live sounds ideal, and we shouldn’t change a thing,” she told The Sunday Times.
In 2020, she told Harper’s Bazaar, “I thought it was really interesting how resonant that was for people. One of my best friends was like, ‘That is my dream. Don’t ever move in.’
Brad Falchuk and Gwyneth Paltrow relied on an intimacy teacher in the beginning of their marriage. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
“Oh, all my married friends say that the way we live sounds ideal, and we shouldn’t change a thing.”
“I think it certainly helps with preserving mystery and also preserving the idea that this person has their own life. So, this is something I’m trying to remain aware of now as we merge together.”
Judith Light and her husband of 39 years, Robert Desiderio, know the secret to a long-lasting marriage: distance.
The star of the new Apple TV+ supernatural drama “Before” explained why living at opposite ends of the country from her partner makes their bond stronger.
While Judith Light primarily resides in New York, her husband of 40 years, Robert Desiderio, lives in California. (Gregg DeGuire)
“We talk every day. We FaceTime every day,” she told People magazine. “He loves to be alone, and I love to be alone. We both love our alone time. We have that. It’s also very creative for us.”
She added, “We also make sure that, when we’re having something that’s upsetting for either one of us, that we both make sure that we stay in the room, and we keep talking. Sometimes we have to take a break. We say, ‘Wait, we have to stop now. Now, we have to stop, and then we’re going to come back to this.'”
“We talk every day. We FaceTime every day. He loves to be alone, and I love to be alone. We both love our alone time. We have that. It’s also very creative for us.”
Judith Light and husband Robert Desiderio have been married since 1985. (Gregg DeGuire)
The duo first met while starring in “One Life to Live” in the ’80s before tying the knot in 1985. Desiderio, who has appeared in various television and film projects throughout the years, published his first novel, “The Occurrence,” in February 2020.
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“He calls himself a recovering actor,” Light said of Desiderio’s retirement from acting. “Now he’s so much happier than he was.”
“[It] makes our marriage and our relationship much happier.” she added.
Fox News Digital’s Christina Dugan Ramirez contributed to this report.
