'Beverly Hills 90210' star Jennie Garth had met her husband, who is nine years younger, through a blind date in 2014. They married within months of knowing each other, but soon realized there were challenges.
Sometimes, love just shows up even when we are not looking. It has us in its grip and it's got us so tight that we can't see if we are going too fast until we stumble. It doesn't matter how old we are when we fall head over heels in love. It's a powerful enough emotion that can sometimes make us forget to stop and think about how fast we are going.
When actress Jennie Garth, 48, of Beverly Hills, 90210 fame met her husband Dave Abrams, 39, she wasn't in the mindset to be falling in love but her emotions swept her away. "It was unreal," the BH90210 actress told PEOPLE at the time. "It was perfect. Things just lined up and I was like, ‘I don’t need it, I don’t want it,’ and there it came," she added. "He completes me."
Abrams, who is also an actor, met her in late 2014 on a blind date. They quickly became serious and married each other within months in July 2015 at her six-acre ranch home in Los Olivos, California. The short timeline "hurt us," Garth admitted to PEOPLE. "We rushed it too much, and we had individual things we needed to work out. Maybe it was a mistake [to move so fast] and we’ve all had to learn and grow from that," she added.
Just like any other relationship, when the honeymoon period wore off the real challenges started showing up. "When everything wasn’t shiny and pretty and fun like it had been initially when things got challenging, [Dave] didn’t know how to handle it as much," Garth added.
Her husband, who is nine years younger, eventually filed for divorce in 2018 and that devastated her. She was also blindsided by the way she found out about it and used it as inspiration for a storyline on BH90210, the hit reboot she stars on and co-created with colleague and friend Tori Spelling.
"I found out that he filed for divorce from TMZ," said Garth. "That was a big deal for me. So we used it in the show, because why not use the things that hurt us most and then take the power out of them and make them funny."
Abrams had filed for divorce in April 2018 and she filed a response in June citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for their split. Their date of separation was listed as August 29, 2017, according to PEOPLE. She had also asked the court to make sure that Abrams doesn't get spousal support as they had signed a prenup before their wedding in 2015. Less than a year after they separated, the couple was back together.
"They have been working hard on their relationship and they’re in a really good place now,” Garth’s rep told PEOPLE in February 2019. "They’re very happy."
The Little Bit Country actress, who had been divorced twice before, said, "The [possibility of a third divorce] really devastated me. I was in a really bad mindset for a good five or six months. It was just embarrassing. And it made the accepting of it so much harder. But when I finally did accept, like, we’re breaking up, I had to tell myself, Dave is not an option. Because I kept wanting it. And then, just when I felt whole again, we started hanging out."
Garth was previously married to musician Daniel Clark and actor Peter Facinelli, with whom she has three children.
Her biggest takeaway from their time apart was the lessons they learned when they were not together. "We both had separate learning to do, and then coming back and sharing that growth was kind of the fiber that connected us back together like, ‘I see you differently now'," she said. Now, they make conscious efforts to make their marriage work.
"It’s very easy to go back to those old ways," she said. "So it’s a process and it’s continuously wanting to better the relationship," she added, and this includes being able to share a laugh together. "Dave keeps me young and fun. He makes me laugh. And that is the most important thing!" The Jennie Garth Project star said.
They recently celebrated his birthday together and the actress called him her "rock." "Happy Birthday to my husband @dirvla This world is unstable and changing and scary...but you are, as always, my rock. I❤️you!!" she said in a post on Instagram.
References:
https://people.com/tv/jennie-garth-wants-court-deny-dave-abrams-spousal-support/
https://people.com/tv/jennie-garth-how-she-saved-marriage-dave-abrams-after-separation/
https://people.com/tv/jennie-garth-dave-abrams-call-off-their-divorce/
