For more than 30 years, the two have managed to stay strong and the love between them never diminished, even as they battled through personal triumphs and tragedies like Rita's brush with breast cancer.
Whether it was for his roles in Turner and Hooch, Sleepless in Seattle or Sheriff Woody in the Toy Story series, falling for actor Tom Hanks' charm is not hard. But he fell for someone just as hard; his wife of 33 years, actress Rita Wilson.
Hollywood isn't always known for celebrities whose marriages have survived. However, there are exceptions and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are a part of that club. Their love story is one that will make you swoon.
It all started in the early 1980s when Tom and Rita first met on the sets of Bosom Buddies before co-starring in the movie Volunteers. Though Tom was still married to his college sweetheart, late Samantha Lewes, at the time, he told the popular magazine GQ that there was an immediate spark between the two of them, reported the Daily Mail. "Rita and I just looked at each other and — kaboing — that was that. I asked Rita if it was the real thing for her, and it just couldn't be denied."
But as immediate as the spark was, the two of them couldn't act on it. According to Good Housekeeping, Tom mentioned that his first marriage was already broken. "I was looking for something I had not found as a kid," he told Express UK in 2013. "And a broken marriage meant I was sentencing my own kids to the sort of feelings I had at their age. I was just too young and insecure for marriage. I was 23 and my son Colin was already 2 when I married for the first time. I was not really ready to take on those responsibilities."
However, after his split from Samantha, he knew he couldn't ignore the connection with Rita. So though his divorce was finalized in 1987, by December of 1986, he and Rita had taken their romance public.
Tom married Rita in April 1988 and to date, he has never been happier than he's been with his beautiful wife. In fact, when he received his first Oscar in 1993 for Philadelphia, the first thing he did was kiss his wife.
"Here's what I know," he said during the speech. "I could not be standing here without that undying love that was just sung about by, not Bruce Springsteen, but Neil Young. And I have that in a lover that is so close to fine we should all be able to experience such heaven right here on earth."
"I view my wife as my lover, and we have a bond that goes beyond words like wife or girlfriend or mother," he told Oprah in 2001. "For example, I was able to construct a number of things in Philadelphia [1993] because of my relationship with Rita."
"The success of our relationship was a matter of timing, maturity, and our willingness to have an intimate connection," Tom continued. "When I married Rita, I thought, 'This is going to require some change on my part.' I won't deny that providence was part of us finding each other, but our relationship isn't magic—the way it's shown in movies. In real life, our connection is as concrete as me sitting here. Not that marriage doesn't come close to being hell in a handbasket sometimes. But we both know that no matter what, we'll be with each other—and we'll get through it."
He even mentioned that Rita was his best friend. “In addition to being my lover. And it has been that way from the very beginning,” he added. “We laugh just as much now at two in the morning as we always have. And we fight less and less.”
As for his wife, she had her own bits to add. Rita told Piers Morgan in 2012, "I'll never forget, we were standing on the corner of 57th and 5th in New York, or 58th and 5th. We were holding hands, and we were waiting for the traffic light to change."
"And he [Tom] looked at me and he said, 'You know, I just want you to know, that you never have to change anything about who you are in order to be with me. Literally, a wave of—if love is a feeling, or a cellular thing that happens to your body, it went through me, and that's pretty much who he is, and how he's been," she said, reported E!Online.
Little did Tom know that 14 years after he gave that interview, he would have to watch his wife suffer from breast cancer and undergo a double mastectomy. But through it all, he supported her. “You never know how your spouse is going to react in a situation like this,” she said in an interview with the New York Times. “I was so amazed, so blown away by the care my husband gave me… Who knew it would make you even closer?”
The true secret behind their three-decade-long marriage? “It’s like anything,” Rita explained to Us Weekly. “We got married, we committed to each other, we love each other and we work hard at our relationship. … Not only do we love each other, we really like each other, and we like being together, and we support each other and we keep the communication channels open. That’s always important.”
References:
https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/431043/Tom-Hanks-I-made-all-my-mistakes-before-I-was-famous
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/g3131/tom-hanks-rita-wilson-marriage/
https://www.oprah.com/omagazine/oprah-interviews-tom-hanks/all
