Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are reuniting on screen for Netflix’s new release “The Christmas Chronicles 2,” but off screen, they’ve never been apart — not since first pairing up 37 years ago.
They’ve also never said, “I do,” to each other in all that time, and they plan to keep it that way.
During a conversation with Hoda Kotb aired Wednesday morning on TODAY, the couple shared the simple reason their no-marriage arrangement works for them.
“We’ve both been married and divorced,” Russell noted, referring to his union with ex-wife Season Hubley and Hawn’s with ex-husbands Gus Trikonis and Bill Hudson.
And while some of those past nuptials led to beloved children, they didn’t exactly result in an appreciate for the tying the knot.
“Marriage didn’t work for either one of us,” Hawn said plainly on TODAY. “I’m not saying that it wouldn’t work again, but I didn’t think that we really needed to get married. I mean, what marriage ended up being, in many ways, is big business”
So the couple, who began dating in 1983, decided that they’d live together, unless their children — his son, Boston Russell, her kids, Oliver and Kate Hudson, and their shared son, Wyatt Russell — ever had a problem with it.
“We said if this is ever an issue, if the kids feel we need to do this, then we’ll get married,” Russell, 69, recalled.
But as Hawn, 75, interjected, “They didn’t want us to get married.”
And so they remain one of Hollywood’s most enduring duos to never walk down the aisle, or as Hoda put it, they’re “the gold standard for living together and having a great relationship.”
Now Russell and Hawn, who’ve starred alongside each other in 1968’s “The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band,” 1984’s “Swing Shift” and most famously in 1987’s “Overboard,” are portraying another iconic couple with a great relationship — Santa and Mrs. Claus, in a sequel to the 2018 hit “The Christmas Chronicles.”
It seems you just can’t keep these two apart, not even on Hollywood Boulevard, where they have side-by-side stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
