11 celebrities who got married at a young age, from Macaulay Culkin to Kim Kardashian
Maria Noyen
- Earlier this week, Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi announced they are getting married.
- At 19 and 20, they are on the younger end of the spectrum of couples who tie the knot.
Millie Bobby Brown, 19, and Jake Bongiovi, 20, announced their engagement earlier this week. But they are far from the only celebrities to marry young.
On Tuesday, Brown and Bongiovi shared pictures of themselves embracing on Instagram. Brown's post shows a ring on the actor's wedding ring finger, prompting people to wonder whether she and Bongiovi are engaged.
"I've loved you three summers now, honey, I want 'em all," Brown captioned the post, referencing lyrics from Taylor Swift's hit song "Lover."
Their posts prompted speculation that the couple, who have been dating since 2021, are engaged.
If so, they aren't the only high-profile couples to tie the knot young. Take a look at 12 other celebrity couples who opted not to wait to head down the alter.
Like Brown, Kim Kardashian was 19 when she married her first husband music producer Damon Thomas.
Kardashian, 42, married Thomas in 2000. According to US Magazine, the couple was together for three more years before splitting in 2003.
In 2018, she poked fun at the marriage during an episode of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," USA Today reported. According to the outlet, Kardashian told her younger sister Kendall Jenner that she "got married on ecstasy."
"I did ecstasy once, and I got married," she said. "I did it again, I made a sex tape."
As Insider previously reported, the SKIMS founder remarried twice, first to former NBA player Kris Humphries and third to Ye.
She and Ye, whose divorce was settled in November, co-parent their four children together: North, 9; Saint, 7; Chicago, 4; and Psalm, 3.
"Game of Thrones" star Sophie Turner married Joe Jonas when she was 23.
Turner and Jonas started dating in 2016 after exchanging messages on Instagram once the singer slid into her DMs, Insider previously reported.
"We had a lot of mutual friends and they'd been trying to introduce us for a long time," Turner told Harper's Bazaar UK during a March 2019 interview. "We were following each other on Instagram and he direct messaged me one fine day, out of the blue."
The couple, who share two children, went on to get engaged in 2017 before tying the knot in a surprise Las Vegas wedding in 2019. It took place at A Little White Wedding Chapel, following the Billboard Music Awards, at which the Jonas Brothers performed.
They later had a second wedding in France – guests included family members such as Nick Jonas, his wife Priyanka Chopra, model Ashley Graham, and Turner's "Game of Thrones" costar Maisie Williams, who served as the maid of honor.
Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon were 25 and 23 when they tied the knot in 1999.
Phillippe and Witherspoon tied the knot in 1999, but the latter filed for divorce in 2006, Insider previously reported. They have remained on friendly terms since separating.
Even before the pair starred alongside each other in the 1999 film "Cruel Intentions," they began dating after meeting each other at Witherspoon's 21st birthday party, according to People Magazine.
During a 1998 interview with Jane magazine, Witherspoon recalled meeting Phillippe for the first time.
"I don't know what came over me — maybe the seven Midori sours — but I told him, 'I think you're my birthday present,'" she said.
The former couple shares two children: Ava, 23, and Deacon, 19.
Solange Knowles and her ex-husband Daniel Smith got married when they were 17 and 19.
After becoming pregnant with her son Julez at 17, Knowles married his father and her high school sweetheart in 2004. However, the marriage didn't last, as she filed for divorce in 2006.
Reflecting on what she learned from the relationship during a 2014 interview with Harper's Bazaar, Knowles said she felt much older than she was due to marrying young.
"In a lot of ways, emotionally and mentally, I feel far older than 27," she said. "Just going through a marriage and a divorce—which I essentially did by 21—will give you an insane amount of perspective on life."
She went on to marry music director Alan Ferguson in 2014 but confirmed they were divorcing in 2020, according to Essence Magazine.
Avril Lavigne married Deryck Whibley when she was 24.
Lavigne and Whibley, the Sum 41 frontman, met when she was just 17 years old. The couple went on to tie the knot in 2006 before splitting three years later.
While the "Complicated" singer, 38, is now dating Tyga, she was previously married to Nickleback singer Chad Kroeger and was engaged to Mod Sun from April 2022 until April 2023.
According to Hello! Magazine, Lavigne once told Billboard Magazine she was a hopeless romantic who loves "love."
"The way I looked at it is I married my long-terms," she said.
Rachel Miner and Macaulay Culkin tied the knot when they were both 18.
Culkin and Miner were both 18 when they married in 1998, following their engagement at 17, according to a Newsweek article at the time, Hollywood Life reports.
However, they ended up separating two years later and divorced in 2002. Culkin went on to date Mila Kunis before they eventually broke up in 2011.
Culkin later met Brenda Song on the set of the movie "Changeland," released in 2019, Insider previously reported. Years later, he told Esquire that he was waiting for the other shoe to drop at the onset of the relationship because it felt too good to be true. "And it's always gonna drop," he said. "Something bad's gonna happen. Someone's gonna die!"
Nevertheless, the couple, who share a son named Dakota, reportedly got engaged in January 2022.
Olivia Wilde was 19 when she married her first husband, Tao Ruspoli, who she was introduced to by a friend of her parents.
According to Metro UK, Wilde and Ruspoli, who was 27 when they met, eloped on a bus and married in 2003. Their relationship lasted until 2011, when she filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, US Weekly reported.
Reflecting on her first marriage in Lifetime's "The Conversation With Amanda de Cadenet" in 2012, Wilde said she felt like getting married young "stunted" her growth, the outlet reported.
"I really had a sense that I had stunted my growth. I think that's one of the things that made me feel so uncomfortable in my marriage. It was really no fault of my husband. It was me realizing that I had sort of arrested development," she said. "I knew the only way I was going to grow the f-ck up was to learn to take care of myself."
Wilde, who directed "Don't Worry Darling," went on to get engaged to fellow actor Jason Sudeikis' in January 2013. They share a son named Otis and a daughter named Daisy.
They broke up in November 2020, and she later dated popstar Harry Styles for two years before they called it quits in November 2022, Insider previously reported.
Britney Spears was 22, and Kevin Federline was 26 when they married in 2004.
Spears and Federline met at a club in Hollywood called Joseph's, according to the former backup dancer.
After their divorce, Federline told People in 2008: "Our eyes met and that was it. We just hit it off right away. I learned real fast how much of a whirlwind the press and everything was."
Three months later, the pair tied the knot in a surprise wedding attended by 27 of their family and friends. They went on to have two children together, Sean Preston and Jayden James.
However, eight weeks after the birth of their second son, Spears filed for divorce from the rapper, citing "irreconcilable differences," according to People. They reached an initial divorce settlement in March 2007.
Federline remarried in 2013 to his long-term girlfriend, Victoria Prince, People Magazine reported.
Meanwhile, Spears married model and personal trainer Sam Asghari in an intimate wedding in Los Angeles in June 2022.
Uma Thurman was 19 when she married Gary Oldman, who was 31.
According to InStyle, Thurman told Vanity Fair that she met Oldman when she was 18. However, they divorced in 1992, two years after getting married.
In 1996, in another interview with Vanity Fair, Thurman said that, looking back, she thought of the marriage as "a mistake."
"But you know, what can I say? He's a truly great actor. We met when I was 18. He was 12 years older. It was a crazy love affair that ended, as it needed to," she added. "He was my first love. I had no prior experience."
Thurman went on to marry actor Ethan Hawke in 1998. The pair share two children – "Stranger Things" star Maya Hawke and Levon Roan Thurman-Hawke. However, the relationship didn't last, and the couple divorced in 2005.
Meanwhile, Oldman has been married three more times, according to the Evening Standard. He is currently married to Gisele Schmidt.
Janet Jackson was 18 when she married her ex-husband James DeBarge, who was 21.
Jackson and DeBarge, a musician, eloped in 1984, according to Newsweek. The couple was together for a year before the marriage was annulled.
She remarried twice more. Her next marriage was to René Elizondo Jr., a songwriter and music video director – the pair tied the knot in secret in 1991 before filing for divorce in 2000. Jackson later told Entertainment Weekly in 2001 that the reason she kept the marriage a secret was to protect their relationship.
"I was willing to do anything to protect what we had. Because I feel that it's so difficult in this business, the whole marriage thing," she said.
After her second divorce, she went on to date rapper Jermaine Dupri from 2002 to 2009. The former couple remains friends.
In 2012, Jackson married her third husband Wissam Al Mana, a businessman with whom she had her son Eissa in 2017. Shortly after, they filed for divorce citing cultural differences, according to PopSugar.
Cher was 18 when she married her first husband, Sonny Bono, who was 29.
In 1975, Cher and Sonny Bono legally divorced. The pair, who met at a party in 1962, were married for 13 years, according to People.
While married, Cher and Sonny, who cohosted the variety show "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour," welcomed their only child, Chaz Bono.
Speaking of the relationship with Parade in 2010, Cher explained that there were multiple reasons why the marriage didn't work, including infidelity. "Stardom made Sonny a huge womanizer," she said.
Cher was briefly married to musician Gregg Allman from 1975 until 1979, according to People. She is currently dating music exec, Alexander Edwards.
Sonny remarried American politician Mary Bono. In 1998, however, he died from head injuries resulting from a ski accident while visiting the Heavenly Ski Resort, located on the Nevada-California border, according to History.com. He was 62.
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