Dating across the fame divide: the celebrities and royals who married ‘normal’ people

There is something deeply satisfying about a celebrity who decides to couple up with a normie. Firstly, because it implies that any one of us weirdos could pull an A-lister if we were simply in the right place at the right time. But secondly, because it also raises so many interesting questions. Why? How? Where did they meet? How do they make it work? Does the normal person even understand the concept of a glam team? Does the celebrity even understand the concept of renting? It’s fascinating.

As for who to direct those questions to, well, that’s what we’ll be answering here. From Riz Ahmed’s coffee shop meet-cute with his novelist wife to Sydney Sweeney’s “business guy” fiancé, here are all the celebs and royals that took a chance on kissing a frog, only for it to remain a frog. Aka ended up with us: the normal people!

Eddie Redmayne and Hannah Bagshawe

An Etonian romance! Whether people who go to Eton are normal or not is up for debate, but regardless, these two lovebirds met at school, rather than on the red carpet. It all started when Redmayne walked (shirtless, we hasten to add) for a charity fashion show during his uni days. “I was this pasty, freckly guy and when I came on, the girls in the audience didn’t take much notice of me,” Redmayne has recalled. But Redmayne took notice of someone himself: Hannah Bagshawe, who he clocked standing across the room at an after-party. “She was very beautiful and very funny and she loves the arts and theatre just as I do, so we became friends.” The pair officially started dating in 2012, when Bagshawe was a financial publicist, before marrying in 2014. And yes — 10 years on they’re still married.

The Duke of Westminster and Olivia Henson

Hugh Grosvenor, aka the Duke of Westminster, was once considered to be one of Britain’s eligible bachelors. He’s among the richest in the country with a net worth of over £10 billion, and happens to be close friends with Prince William and Prince Harry. In fact, he’s even godfather to George and Archie. But this week he’s marrying Olivia Henson, an account manager for Belazu, which is a B-Corp certified food company based in London. By royal standards, that’s pretty normal.

Riz Ahmed and Fatima Farheen Mirza

Sure, she might be a New York Times bestselling novelist now, but when Fatima Farheen Mirza met Riz Ahmed in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, she was just the person who reached for the same laptop plug as him. “She's an amazing novelist. We met so randomly while I was preparing for this role, for Sound Of Metal when I was in New York,” Ahmed told The Tonight Show in 2021. “We both sat down at the same table in the cafe where we both turned up to write. We were both jostling over the same laptop plug points, [it was] a very modern way of meeting.” Very cute. The pair married in a small Covid-friendly ceremony in 2020, and seem to be blissfully happy. Tip: Fatima is worth a follow on Instagram, for being interesting herself but also for the couple goals of it all.

Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso

These two also have a great meet-cute (see what happens when you don’t have your relationships arranged by your publicists?) that took place in a bar in Miami after Matt Damon had a long day of filming. His cast mates persuaded him to go out drinking and, begrudgingly, he acquiesced. “They said, ‘Come on,’ and kind of dragged me along,” Damon told The Ellen Show in 2011. “I literally saw her across a crowded room and eight years and four kids later, that’s my life. I don’t know how else our paths would have crossed if that didn’t happen [...] When you’re tired, suck it up and go to the bar and you might meet your wife.” Barroso now works as an interior designer.

Prince William and Kate Middleton

The idea of Princess Kate being a “normal” civilian feels preposterous now, but once she was just like us. Ish. Raised in an upper-middle-class home in Berkshire, the Princess of Wales had a simpler life before she met Prince William at St Andrews University in Scotland. So much so, that the British press rather pointedly referred to her as a “commoner” a lot when they were first revealed to be dating, and then later betrothed to be married. Guess that’s what you get for not being born into aristocracy!

George Clooney and Amal Clooney

When George Clooney first met Amal Alamuddin, she was an international human rights lawyer flying high on her own legal success. A big deal, sure, but not an A-lister by any means. She certainly had some high profile clients though, with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed and former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko all on her books, to name just a few. She met Clooney after a friend introduced them at his Lake Como home in July 2013. They were married by September of the next year.

Sydney Sweeney and Jonathan Davino

Before the Anyone But You press tour meant Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell had rumours swirling due to their close work-wife-slash-husband relationship, many people didn’t even know that Sweeney was engaged. Sweeney has actually been with Davino since 2018, pre-Euphoria fame, pre-Madame Web, pre-pretty much everything!

The pair now work together as a producer duo, but before Sweeney made him a movie man out of him he was, in her words, “a business guy”. Many have reported him to be a “famous restauranteur” or the “heir to a Chicago restaurant business” but Sweeney dismissed this as untrue. “He’s also not the heir of a pizza company,” she told Glamour in an interview. “He’s a business guy. He’s from Chicago. We’ve been watching [this narrative] for six years now and I’m like, ‘What the hell?’”

Jennifer Lawrence and Cooke Maroney

At this point you may be thinking: “Cooke Maroney? Did you just make that name up?” But I did not. Maroney is the longtime, very real husband of the much more normally-named Jennifer Lawrence, and he is an art dealer from Vermont. He currently works as a director at Gladstone 64, the Gladstone Gallery’s Upper East Side location.

Maroney and J-Law met in 2018, after the actress had just called things off with ex-boyfriend Darren Aronofsky. The pair apparently met through Lawrence’s best friend, Laura Simpson, who you may remember as J-Law’s date to the 2014 Oscars. The happy couple said their “I do”s on Rhode Island in October 2019 and now share a child, a two-year-old boy named Cy. They’re incredibly low-key as a pairing, so low-key that the only pictures of them to exist are paparazzi ones!

Ed Sheeran and Cherry Seaborn

After relationships with numerous bleach blonde, sweeping fringe-clad singers (i.e Ellie Goulding and Nina Nesbitt), Sheeran eventually decided to settle down with Suffolk school friend Cherry Seaborn. Seaborn reportedly works at Deloitte within the world climate team, as well as side hustles as a consultant and sustainability advocate. They were friends while growing up and attending Thomas Mills High School in Framlingham, though their relationship wasn’t romantic until much later. The pair married in 2018 at an intimate ceremony with 40 guests and share a daughter, Jupiter, who is two years old.

James Corden and Julia Carey

Gavin and Stacey may have made James Corden famous while he was still in his 20s, but his wife Julia Carey has remained largely out of the limelight for the entirety of their relationship. Corden and Carey were introduced by Corden’s good friend and The History Boys co-star Dominic Cooper around 2009.

Back in ‘09, Carey was working for the non-profit Save the Children, and Cooper asked Corden to attend one of the organisation's events. Corden was smitten from the moment he saw her. “I said, 'Hi, Jules. You might be the most beautiful woman in the world,’” The Late Late Show host recalled to People Magazine. “She said, 'Well, thank you very much. That sounds like something you say a lot.' And I said, 'I've never said it before in my life.' That was it. That was it, really. I was in. And by an absolute miracle, so was she.”