After 41 years together and nine years since his passing, she mourns him even to this day, and continues to love her late husband until her last breathe.
Remember Runaway Bride? Richard Gere meets Julia Roberts while trying to write an article on her for running away from multiple weddings of her own. In any romantic comedy, the way the leading man and lady meet is a classic "meet-cute". The situation will usually be humorous and we know right away that love will blossom. While that looks great on screen, not many of us can boast of a story that unique in real life. But then, there are people like Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards, who had the perfect "meet-cute" even in real life.
How they first met can become a Hollywood movie and we would pay to watch it. Way back in 1959, the long-lasting couple crossed paths while on their way to their therapist.
"We met about 10 years before, literally ships that passed in the night at some event but we actually… our cars, I was going one way and he was going the other, he rolled down the window after smiling a couple of times and he said, 'Are you going where I just came from?'" Andrews told Good Morning Britain, according to Daily Mail.
She explained that they spoke to each other briefly while sitting inside their cars outside their therapist's office. She thought it was "corny", but thinks of her marriage as a "love story". Edwards, who directed Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Pink Panther films, thought of it as romantic though. He once described their meeting "wonderfully Hollywood." You would imagine they were the leading couple from La La Land, how he talked of it.
"We would stop in the middle lane on Sunset [Boulevard, in Beverly Hills] waiting for traffic and then go on," he recalled. "I kept looking over, two or three mornings a week...eventually I said 'hi.'"
Married in 1969, they were together for 41 years until Edwards' last breathe. "It was all kind of meant to be," Edwards had said in an interview.
When the couple tied the knot, they had a blended family with the Sound of Music actress' daughter Emma and Edwards' children Jennifer and Geoffrey. Later, the powerhouse couple adopted two girls, Amy and Joanna, from Vietnam, in 1974 and 1975, respectively, according to Country Living.
When asked how they stayed together for more than four decades, she said, "Success in our marriage was to take it one day at a time and so, lo and behold, 41 years later there we still were."
During the course of their marriage, they made many films together, some worked while others didn't but it wasn't daunting. "We had bonded so much that it didn't matter," she told the Hollywood Reporter. Eventually, the family moved to Switzerland to heal themselves. "My career was on hold, we had a family," she said in an interview. She had had enough of Hollywood and just wanted to live in her "pretty home".
She just wanted to get away from the madness in Hollywood. And, instead of waiting for the right time to move, they created the right time themselves. Edwards believes that she restored her soul there and his likewise.
When the Mary Poppins actress lost her husband in 2010, it was a pain too deep. Even four years later when she spoke about him, she hadn't come to terms with her loss. "There are days when it's perfectly wonderful and I am myself and then it's suddenly - sock you in the middle of your gut and you think 'ah God I wish he were here'. But he is in a way, I think one carries that love always," she told Good Morning Britain.
She still carries her love for him within her because they loved each other deeply, and it will be a part of her as long as she lives.
References:
https://www.countryliving.com/life/entertainment/a45254/julie-andrews-and-blake-edwards-love-story/
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/eve-sound-music-reunion-julie-783553
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2979246/We-took-one-day-time-Julie-Andrews-reveals-secret-long-marriage-late-husband-Blake-Edwards-admits-s-dealing-death.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u97KRAHUn2s
