General Hospital’s James Patrick Stuart Reveals the Co-Star Around Whom ‘My Heart Would Race’

“Aw, that’s sweet.”

General Hospital viewers are well aware of Valentin and Anna’s past together. But what about their portrayers’ history? Turns out, James Patrick Stuart and Finola Hughes knew each other decades ago, when they were in the same acting class.

Hughes recalled her first impression of Stuart to Soap Opera Digest thusly: “James Patrick was off doing these very fancy movies with Meryl Streep and stuff like that, so I was like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s who that is,'” she said.

Stuart’s reaction to Hughes was a bit different. “When I first met Finola, I was in my 20s,” he noted, “so every time she was around, my heart would race.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” Hughes said in response.

At the time, Stuart couldn’t have imagined a time when he and Hughes would be paired on screen, much less as a daytime supercouple. “There was only one thing on my mind when I was in my 20s!” he laughed. “If you had come to me when I was 25 and said, ‘One day in the far distant future you’ll be working with Fin on such a level that you’ll go home and sigh and think to yourself, ‘Wow, that was a great frickin’ day,’ I don’t know that I would have believed you. It’s kind of a ‘pinch-me’ type of thing every day.”

For “Vanna” shippers, too, as a matter of fact. In real life, Stuart has been married to wife Jocelyn since 2000 and Hughes to Russell Young since 1992.

Check out the relationship status of all of the show’s couples in the below photo gallery.