If Loving cousins Lorna Forbes and Curtis Alden were caught kissing, there was a perfectly good explanation: Their portrayers were in love. “I’m 24, 25 years old, she’s 21 or 22 when we got married,” he recalled for News4Jax. “Two actors in New York… I mean, what are the odds that’s gonna work out?” Whatever they were, the couple beat ’em. Married since ’86, they went on to co-star on MTV’s Teen Wolf and take turns stirring the pot on The Young and the Restless (her as Diane Jenkins, him as Cameron Kirsten).
James Kiberd and Susan Keith
Image Credit: Lisa Rose/JPI
Loving wasn’t just the name of the show anymore when Keith was added to the cast as Shana Sloane — it was also the feeling that sprung up between the soap vet and Mike Donovan’s portrayer (better known for his long run as Trevor Dillon on All My Children). The twosome got hitched in 1986, and since leaving daytime, he’s told Soap Opera News that two things keep him busy these days: “Painting and my wife.”
Justin Deas and Margaret Colin
Image Credit: Arline Richie/JPI, Jennifer Graylock/JPI
As the World Turns made worlds collide for these two; once they were tapped to play Tom Hughes and Margo Montgomery, they fell for one another for real and became husband and wife in 1988. After having two children, the couple (better known for Santa Barbara, where he played Keith Timmons, and Veep) moved from Gotham to New Jersey, then back. Now, she told the New York Times in 2017, “all the pets have died and my sons are mostly gone, so I can clean the apartment and it stays clean all week. That’s huge, right?” In a word, yes.
Natalie Zea and Travis Schuldt
Image Credit: Associated Press
In 2013 — more than a decade after they got together — the Passions alumni (who played Ethan Winthrop and Gwen Hotchkiss in the early 2000s) got engaged in Hawaii. Following Schuldt’s proposal, his fiancée joked to People that “he wanted to make sure he gave the car a thorough test drive before he bought it.” They married that same year and have continued to work steadily in primetime, even briefly reuniting on her TNT comedy, The Detour.
Maura West and Scott DeFreitas
Image Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI
As the World Turns never capitalized on the chemistry between bad girl Carly Tenney and good boy Andy Dixon, but their portrayers sure did. Discussing DeFreitas in a 1998 interview with Soap Opera Digest — before the couple was even dating — West said, “I’m going to marry him.” And indeed, she did, two years later. He and his missus (who now plays General Hospital femme fatale Ava Jerome) have since given her firstborn four younger siblings.
Mary Page Keller and Thomas Ian Griffith
Image Credit: NBC (3)
Another World got it right and then some when it cast these two as Sally Frame and Catlin Ewing in the mid-1980s; they didn’t just become a supercouple on screen, they became one off as well. Married since 1991, the parents of two have re-teamed professionally on screen (in Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision) and off (as the co-executive producers/writers of the NBC pilot The Dunnings).
Lynn Herring and Wayne Northrop
Image Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI
After meeting in an acting class, these soap legends (best known as General Hospital busybody Lucy Coe and Days of our Lives’ original Roman Brady) said “I do” in 1981, just as Northrop’s on-screen romance with Deidre Hall’s Marlena was heating up. “It bothered me in the beginning,” Herring admitted to People. “I kept telling myself, ’It’s the same as my acting class.’ But then I’d remember our instructor telling us we had to feel what we were doing… and I’d get a little worried.”
Sherri Saum and Kamar de los Reyes
Image Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
One Life to Live knew what it was doing when it hooked up these two as Keri Reynolds and Antonio Vega; they also hooked up in real life, marrying in 2007 and adding twins to a family that already included his son from a previous relationship. “He is my best friend and partner,” Saum told Daytime Confidential in 2015, “and I love him so much.”
Robert Newman and Britt Helfer
Image Credit: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection, Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images, ABC/Getty Images
The veteran of Guiding Light (as Josh Lewis) and Young & Restless (as Ashland Locke) must have been extra nice in 1985 for Santa Claus to have delivered him the best of all possible presents at a Christmas party: an introduction to the beautiful actress to whom he’s now been married since 1986 — the same year that she made her daytime debut as troubled Lily Slater on Loving.
Peter and Courtney Simon
Image Credit: CBS (2)
Search for Tomorrow introduced the Simons way back in the 1970s when they were cast as lawyers in love Scott and Kathy Phillips. “We were both married to other people,” he told the New York Times in 1976. “I had three children, and Courtney had one.” But, after their first unions went bust, Guiding Light’s future Ed Bauer tied the knot with the former Courtney Sherman, who went on to win seven (!) Daytime Emmys as a writer.
Robin Christopher and Matt Crane
Image Credit: John Paschal/JPI
Upon being reunited on the set by General Hospital in 2004 (when she was playing Skye Quartermaine and he, Ross Duncan), the couple, hitched since 2000, told Soap Opera Digest that when they were working on Another World as Lorna Devon and Matthew Cory, “we always said to each other, ‘Let’s just cherish this time, because we’ll probably never work together again.” Ha — if they’d only known that fate would re-pair them.
Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes
Image Credit: John Paschal/JPI
Leave it to the actors who bring to life what is considered to be daytime’s first supercouple — Days of Our Lives’ Doug and Julie Williams — to also have a super marriage off screen. In fact, the Hayeses beat their Salem counterparts to the altar by two years, tying the knot in secret in 1974. The secret of their successful relationship? “Serious sugar,” Bill calls it. “An ‘I love you’ kiss first thing in the morning and last thing at night.”
John Aniston and Sherry Rooney
Image Credit: Ron Galella/Getty Images, Vivian Killilea/Getty Images
While playing Eddie Aleata on Love of Life in the 1970s, the future Days of Our Lives legend (as Victori Kiriakis) met the love of his life, second wife Sherry Rooney, who’d been cast as Dory Patton. When he passed away in 2022 at the ripe old age of 89, the couple, parents to one son (Jennifer was his daughter with his ex), had been married for nearly four decades.
