Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest Have Been Married for 38 Years | Her Secret Is “Don’t Get Divorced”

“That’s the long marriage. It’s the safety of knowing his car is in the garage, that I’m not alone, and that he’s here,” she said.

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Kevin Winter

By Suchitra B

March 10, 2023

Posted March 10, 2023

Jamie Lee Curtis' first Oscar nomination for Everything Everywhere All at Once is a huge achievement for her. But what she holds even dearer to her is her 38-year-long marriage to Christopher Guest, the actor, her beau whose photograph she first saw in a magazine.

In 1984, Curtis married the English actor about five months after she first saw his photograph, and they've been together ever since. “I met my husband by seeing his picture in a magazine and saying out loud to a friend of mine, ‘I’m going to marry that dude,’ and married him ... months later,” Curtis told Hoda Kotb during an appearance on TODAY in 2021. “So the truth of the matter is life hinged for me on a couple of seconds that I didn’t see coming.”

Jamie Lee Curtis and her husband actor Christopher Guest have celebrated many special moments together throughout their 38 years of marriage. https://t.co/WV3TMRWBM9
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 8, 2023

In 2015, Curtis discussed her marriage in more detail and offered advice on how to make your marriage last. “Don’t get divorced,” she said. “It’s a fascinating thing. I could write a book on marriage called ‘Don’t Leave’,” per TODAY.

In a 2018 Good Housekeeping profile, Curtis provided more information about her connection with Guest. Marrying your opposite, was her best bit of advice. “My husband and I are opposites. We have been for 33 years, and we always will be," Curtis said. "He’s an intellectual, and I was from the movie star/alcoholic/drug addict side, where education was not the most important thing. We don’t listen to the same radio station, we don’t read the same paper, we don’t go to bed at the same time."

However, they do find common ground in their literary taste. "But we read the same history books. For our 30th anniversary, we both read a book called Undaunted Courage, the story of Lewis and Clark. Then we took eight friends and retraced a section of the Missouri River in canoes that followed the path of their expedition. We’re a little nerdy.”

On their 35th wedding anniversary, Curtis wrote Guest a song with the lyrics, “I feel safe when I drive up and see that you are home." Explaining the sentiment behind the lyrics she said, “That’s the long marriage. It’s the safety of knowing his car is in the garage, that I’m not alone, and that he’s here.”

Now, Curtis, 64, and Guest, 75, are parents. They raised two girls together, Ruby Guest, who came out as transgender in July 2020, and Annie Guest, per AARP. Curtis revealed that she and Guest “have watched in wonder and pride as our son became our daughter Ruby." Ruby married her fiancée Kynthia in a World of Warcraft-themed wedding on May 29, 2022.