Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
Okay, let’s get one thing clear: I do not wish I had gotten engaged at 19, as Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown did to Jake Bongiovi in 2023, but that’s mainly because my pool of suitors at the time was pretty much limited to whoever hadn’t paired off at the frat party yet and wasn’t giving active “I will murder you, and there will eventually be a gripping campus documentary about your death” vibes. That said, young love is real, and that’s what Brown and Bongiovi appear to have found; the two famously got married in Italy in the spring of 2024, which makes their recent instance of PDA at the Miami Open all the more impressive. I mean, having the romantic energy to publicly canoodle with your spouse a year after the wedding bells have rung is really something. Also, Bongiovi’s parents were there? And it didn’t deter him from making out with his wife? Iconic.
There’s also something both quaint and extremely of-the-moment about ending up with someone you met remotely. Brown told Wired in 2023 that she first encountered Bongiovi on Instagram, recalling: “We were friends for a bit, and then…what can I say?” This appears to be how the young Hollywood set meets each other now, and not that literally any member of young Hollywood asked, but I approve. It has to be easier to get to know someone via social media or text than in the greenroom of Jimmy Kimmel Live! or the bathroom of some too-expensive restaurant in West Hollywood (I’m looking at you, Horses), or wherever else two celebs might come across each other in person.
On a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Brown added that it didn’t take long for her and Bongiovi to decide that they were it for each other. “We had dogs together, and we were taking care of our animals, and we started living this day-to-day life, and I thought, ‘Oh, I really don’t think I could ever see you as anything else. I don’t want to be with anyone else ever again. I don’t want to date, I don’t want to meet anyone, I want you,’” Brown recalled. Mazel on living the dream, you crazy kids!
