While we often look to movies and TV shows for their stories on love and relationships, it’s often the stars’ real-life love stories that have us swooning even more. After all, who could forget Ryan Reynolds talking about the sparks flying between him and Blake Lively before they even dated?
In a new confession from Jack Black, for example, fans will have the same reaction. As it turns out, Black’s love story with his wife, Tanya Haden, is sweeter than any rom-com out there.
Speaking of how they met in Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Black said they first met in high school and were friends for a long time before things turned romantic. “We would cross paths, and I had a girlfriend, and she had a boyfriend and it was just a little talking here and there,” he remembered, per People. “And then that day came when neither of us had a significant other.”
But when the moment came at a surprise birthday party for a mutual friend, Black got cold feet. “I had always been so kind of intimidated and never really wanted to really approach — she made the first move is the point,” he said.
“She came up to me and said, ‘Hey, do you ever wanna go get dinner? I should give you my number,’ ” he remembered. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God.'”
“Heaven opened up above my head, because it was like, this is the thing that I would always want to happen,” he said. How adorable!
Less than a year after they started dating, Black and Haden eloped in March 2006. A few months later, they became parents to their first son, Samuel “Sammy” Black, who’s now 18. Two years later, in May 2008, they welcomed their second son, now 16-year-old Thomas “Tommy” Black.
Luckily, albeit rare, this isn’t the only time Black has gushed about Haden. “It’s a lonely existence just floating around without a life partner. With other people I’ve been with, even when I was with them, I’d feel alone,” the School of Rock star told The Guardian in 2011. “When we found each other, it seemed really obvious. When I’m with Tanya I have this great feeling of sharing experiences, of not feeling alone in the universe because I’ve got her beside me. I’m a bit of a romantic.”
So regardless of who made the first move, it seems the rest is now history. When you know, you know, right?
Before you go, click here to see the longest celebrity marriages.
