Relationships in Hollywood rarely last. Regardless of whether or not that's an accurate statement, it is how the public typically perceives celebrity love.
Acting requires a lot of travel and long hours away from home. A life in the public eye can also be extremely trying for a couple, especially a new one. With people judging and scrutinizing their every move, it's really no wonder why so many star couples find it difficult to survive.
However, there are some role model couples out there. For anyone who grew up in the '90s, there is one power couple that is well known and loved.
Since the early 2000s, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. have shown fans that true and lasting love is possible in show business.
Gellar made her mark with the iconic show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy immortalized Gellar and cemented her as a role model for young women at a time when there weren't many.
Freddie Prinze Jr. rose to fame when he starred in I Know What You Did Last Summer, She's All That, and Summer Catch.
In 2000, the two stars began dating. They got married in 2002, and have made the world love them more and more ever since. Separately, they are great, but together, they're a force to be reckoned with.
With such a lasting and loving relationship, people often wonder how they do it. What's the secret recipe behind their love? Well, we're here to connect the dots for you.
Here are the 20 Secrets Behind Sarah Michelle Gellar And Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Marriage.
They Started Off As Friends
Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar first met on the set of I Know What You Did Last Summer. While the two hit it off, their relationship didn’t move past the friendship stage for years.
In an interview with E! News, Prinze said that their friendship is key to their relationship success. "We just became friends. That's one of the reasons I think our relationship has always been so good," he said. "We were friends for a good two years before we ever went on a date."
While filming their first movie together, Prinze spent lots of time with Gellar, but he has stated that they almost entirely incompatible early on.
"We were night and day," he said. "If you ask her, she would say 'Oh my god, I thought he was a dork.' and I'd be like 'Oh my god, she just ran a million miles an hour and I couldn't keep up with her.'"
However, things changed over time. A few years later, when the two began dating, they were able to add onto the foundation that they had already built.
"She knew what kind of guy I was," Prinze stated. "She knew what my morals were, what my priorities were, and vice versa. We already kind of knew all the faults in the other person."
Gellar Is A Widow Of Warcraft
When Sarah Michelle Gellar visited Harry, the Harry Connick Jr. talk show, the host asked the actress what the secret was behind their lasting marriage.
Gellar listed off a few different things, including having a separate credit card for shopping another for video games. Hearing the video game bit, Connick Jr. piped up about his wife, Jill Goodacre, hating his Call of Duty obsession, and how she almost left him.
Gellar then told a story about her battle with her husband's World of Warcraft addiction.
"There used to be a game called World of Warcraft," she said. “I literally at this point was like, 'I lost my husband,' so I joined a support group ― not a joke ― called 'Widows of Warcraft.'"
She continued: "Ladies, if you are losing them to video game world, there are support groups out there on this thing called the world wide interweb and you can meet other people who have dealt with this same issue and have suggestions on how to communicate [about] the video game."
In the end, the solution for Gellar and for other partners struggling to pry their love ones from video games was simple: “Have kids," she said. "Cause there’s just no time."
Their First Date Was An Accident
Back before Prinze and Gellar were a couple, they were friends. They started hanging out on the set of I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Prinze Jr. would drive from Southport, North Carolina to Wilmington, North Carolina to work out with Gellar. Over the next few years, the two would hang out as friends.
Then, in 2000, Freddie invited a few friends to meet him for dinner. He frequented a famous Japanese restaurant in California called Asanebo.
In a Facebook live post, Prinze Jr. admitted that he typically went just for the sake, but on this occasion, he was going for dinner.
When it came time for the group dinner, it seems that fate stepped in and changed things up. When reflecting on their first date with People, Gellar explained how a minor mishap turned into a lifetime of love.
“We had made plans for dinner with a mutual friend and the person canceled,” she said. “We decided to have dinner anyway and never looked back.”
All of these years later, Gellar and Prinze still find time to eat at Asanebo. They've even remained good friends with the sushi chef over the last 18 years, possibly because of the role that he played in setting up the couple's eventual marriage.
The Many Wedding Disasters
By all accounts, the wedding of Gellar and Prinze was said to have been both beautiful and memorable, but the event wasn't without some problems.
According to an interview in People, the hosts planned to hold the wedding outdoors in 2002.
However, because of Hurricane Hernan encroaching about 300 miles away, they had to change their plans and host the event indoors at Mexico’s El Careyes resort. The guests didn't mind, and afterward, people were raving about all of the fun that they had together.
Yet, that wasn't the only bad thing that happened.
When the guests were leaving the next day, an earthquake hit Mexico. However, even a 4.6 magnitude quake couldn't ruin the event.
"Earthquake? Hurricane? Hey, I think it’s a great way to start,” said Ron DiBlasio, a friend of the Prinze family and a talent manager. “All of those bigger-than-life natural events can only bode well for the marriage.”
Even the bride couldn't be fazed by Mother Nature's attempts to spoil her special day. In fact, while the guests all left the country in the wake of the earthquake, the newly married couple stayed on in Mexico to enjoy their honeymoon.
Afterward, even with of all the ruckus, one of Gellar's bridesmaids, Lindsay Sloane, said that “It was the most incredible weekend. We laughed, danced, and shared in their love.”
Prinze Doesn’t Drink
When you listen to Freddie Prinze Jr. discuss his past, it's clear that he doesn't hate drinking. He's talked about how he used to drink sake underage in the past.
He also told E! News that he used to buy beer for the group of underage stars, including Gellar, while they all filmed I Know What You Did Last Summer.
However, these days, Prinze lays off the booze in order to stay in shape. In an interview with People, he dished out his secrets.
“When guys say, ‘Hey, man, how are you in good shape?’ I say ‘Well, I don’t drink,'" he said. "I really don’t. I’ll have some sake with my wife every once in a while but other than that [I don’t].”
When it comes time for date night with his wife, he'll typically enjoy only a sip or two of some sake.
When they do go out, however, Prinze and Gellar take part in a little ritual that allows them to spend some quality time together and shed the additional calories from dinner.
“When my wife and I go on our dates, we’re usually going to sushi— hat’s kind of our favorite thing to do together,” he said. “We get a little bit of cold sake and some sushi and make sure we park far away from the restaurant, so we can walk a bit after like we used to when we lived here in New York.”
Gellar Is A Stage Name
In the past, Sarah Michelle Gellar was the former Buffy star's legal name, but when she got married to Prinze, she took his name.
In her personal life, she is known as Sarah Michelle Prinze. She made the decision to keep her old name as a stage name to help her professionally.
However, the change came with its fair share of problems as well. While on Harry, Gellar discussed some of the confusion that comes with the dual names.
"It’s confusing because people know me as Sarah Michelle Gellar. Airports are a particular place of problem because interestingly enough, that Internet thing is not an acceptable form of ID. So if I get to the airport and someone has printed my pass as Sarah Michelle Gellar but I only have ID as Sarah Michelle Prinze, I can’t get on my flight,” she said.
She also told a story of pulling into the Warner Bros. lot.
"They had put it down as Sarah Michelle Gellar and I had no ID and they wouldn’t let me on," she said. "There was a big billboard of me like right above and I kept pointing and I’m like ‘that’s me.’ Nope, I wound up having to park, it was a thing.”
Prinze And Gellar Bond Over Their Love Of Food
When Prinze looks at his wife and thinks, "why her? When did I know she was the one?" Well, his answer pretty much comes down to food.
Prinze remembers their first date, where he saw a woman who wasn't afraid to eat. That's when he knew.
“A lot of girls back then in Hollywood as far as the actresses, they didn’t eat, they ate salad,” Prinze said. “And I had gone on a date with a handful of them; they would never eat what I would eat. You have to have that in common with me if we’re going to get along."
Well, Gellar gave him that and more. "Sarah came to dinner with me, and we sat down and she ate everything," he remembered.
Knowing how important of a role that food plays in both of their lives, it makes sense that they would fall for each other over a plate.
Whenever they've talked about this story, it's always been from Prinze's perspective. However, on Facebook Live, Gellar added a memory of her own from that night.
She jokingly prodded the expensive date: "Then the credit card company got the bill for that dinner and wanted to know if there was fraud on the card."
Prinze's Million Dollar Bet With Howard Stern
Howard Stern says a lot of things to get a reaction from of his guests. His strategies work and many people let their guards down while sitting near the shock jock.
When Prinze joined the show back in 2001, however, he didn't let Stern get under his skin and he never backed down from his position.
When discussing his new relationship with Gellar, Prinze spoke about how committed the two of them were. Stern mocked this, saying that there is no such thing as lasting love in Hollywood.
He listed off couples that hadn't work, suggested to Prinze that he would eventually leave Gellar or be unfaithful to her, which was typically what happened with Hollywood couples.
Stern even took it one step further. He initiated a written bet with Prinze on the show. Stern bet him $1 million that the couple would not last.
He said, "In about 10 years, you're going to hunt me down and go, 'Howard, I owe you money.'" Prinze agreed to the bet and laughed off the jabs.
The interview took place 17 years ago. Two years ago at the 15-year mark, while doing an interview on Build Series, Prinze spoke about the bet.
Pointing at the camera, Prinze addressed Stern, saying, "You have not paid that bet, young man."
Gellar Suffered From Postpartum Depression
In many ways, the public expects too much out of celebrities. Fans want them to share their every secret and completely give up their personal lives and any privacy.
This can be quite invasive for many celebrities. However, stars hold a great deal of power when it comes helping others, especially when fans go through difficult times and can relate to mega-famous stars.
Well, the Gellar/Prinze family is one of the more private star couples out there.
They've attributed their private personal lives as one of the things that has helped them thrive.
So, when Gellar wrote a beautiful Instagram post about her challenges with postpartum depression, it stood out. Many fans reached out and thanked the actress for being so open and honest.
She wrote: "Having kids is wonderful, and life changing, and rarely what you're prepared for. I love my children more than anything in the world. But like a lot of women, I too struggled with postpartum depression after my first baby was born."
"I got help, and made it through, and every day since has been the best gift I could ever have asked for. To those of you going through this, know that you're not alone and that it really does get better," she said.
They've both launched new careers related to food and cooking
We all know Gellar and Prinze as actors. Gellar, particularly, is incredibly well-known for her early work, but both she and her husband transformed their love for food into second careers.
In 2015, Gellar started her company Foodstirs. According CNBC, Foodstirs "sells organic, GMO-free mixes and dessert baking kits online and in stores such as Whole Foods and Fresh Market. … [Foodstirs is] the first-ever USDA organic, full-gluten product line to utilize biodynamic sugar, Equal Exchange fair-trade cocoa and identity-preserved heirloom flour."
Gellar's solo trek into the food industry wasn't lonely for long, though. About one year after Gellar launched Foodstirs, her husband, Prinze published his own cookbook.
In Back to the Kitchen: 75 Delicious, Real Recipes (& True Stories) From a Food-Obsessed Actor, Prinze provides simple recipes that, according to the reviews, are incredibly tasty.
Now, if you don't know about Prinze's background, his foray into food might surprise you. However, this is one actor whose passion for food has always been visible.
Before becoming an actor, Prinze worked in a restaurant and even enrolled in culinary school. He only quit the food dream when he landed his first paying gig as an actor.
It seems, however, that he never quite gave up his love of food.
They Are Strict Parents
Both Prinze and Gellar describe themselves as strict parents, though their methods make them seem more like fair parents.
Throughout their different interviews, the couple has explained various ways that they worked with their kids to get them to listen, participate, or behave.
Gellar, for instance, describes her philosophy on chores in an interview with Today, saying that the kids must do them, and they don’t get paid. "I don’t love the idea of giving them money to do chores that they should do anyway," she said.
Even though the tough love paid off in the end, it was never easy for the Prinze family parents. "Parenting is the hardest thing," Gellar said on Today.
In a Facebook Live post, Prinze echoed this sentiment, stating that being strict is worth it, but that it is still a challenge.
"I feel like a horrible father when I do that," he said. It's because of the difficulty of parenting that he pleads with people about how they talk to parents with well-behaved and responsible kids.
"When your friends have good kids, don't tell the parents they're lucky," he said. "By the 100th time, it's starts to feel insulting. It sucks being a disciplined parent."
Prinze has never watched Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Now that the Gellar/Prinze kids, Charlotte and Rocky, are eight and five respectively, you would think that they would have seen their parents' TV and movie work.
For the most part, however, that doesn't seem to be true.
According to Gellar's talk with The Huffington Post, aside from Star Wars Rebels, their kids haven't seen much.
"We try to sort of keep them separate from that," she said. Though, she did add in the joke, "Oh yeah, my 5-year-old loves Cruel Intentions. We watch it over dinners."
However, if small children not watching a slasher movie like I Know What You Did Last Summer doesn’t surprise you, maybe this will.
According to an interview with Mic, Prinze hasn't even seen all his wife's work.
When asked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Prinze dumbfounded fans with his response. "I've never seen the show," he said.
"I'm pretty sure I wasn't the demographic for Buffy. I was a 22-year-old who was into martial arts and video games and surfing. But I was on the set a lot because we were friends and when we started dating, I obviously would go and visit a lot," he stated.
Target demographic or not, this doesn't seem like a good excuse. Buffy is right for everyone.
A Family That Cooks Together…
If there's one thing that the Prinze/Gellar family truly shares with each other, it's a love of food. Seriously, this family talks a lot about food and cooking.
Both parents work with food in some way and both enjoy being in the kitchen with their family.
According to Gellar's interview on Today, the parents now involve their kids in the process. "I do a lot of cooking with the kids. I’m big on child labor. The kids have to help with the mashed potatoes,” she said. “You want them to understand what the process is. Everything doesn’t come from a box in your house."
Involving the kids, Gellar says, pays dividends in other ways as well. Because of this, her kids are not picky eaters.
"I’m not a restaurant,” she said. “I believe in including my kids in the process. We went to the farmer’s market and they get to pick vegetables they eat over the weekend. I give them a list at the supermarket and ask them to get something. We have a rule in our house. You have to try something 10 times, and two times more before you decide whether or not you like it.”
We do wonder if healthy eating and cooking is a choice or a remnant from Gellar's childhood. After all, she was allegedly banned from McDonalds for life after appearing in a Burger King commercial when she was four.
Don't Mess With The Prinzes
It's easy to see how and why martial arts is important to Gellar. She is Buffy, after all, one of the primary role models for many women.
Gellar is also said to have a black belt in taekwondo and has taken other training courses. However, Prinze is actually the more impressive martial artist in the family.
Though he admits in an interview with Shape that he still has some resentment toward martial arts because he was forced into it at a young age, he still practiced and trained his entire life. Now that he's a parent, he encourages his own children to participate.
Prinze started young because his godfather is Bob Wall. Wall trained with Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris and acted in several of the biggest martial arts movies in history.
"Before I could even construct sentences I was throwing wheel kicks," Prinze said.
Then, when he was 12, Prinze got into Brazilian jiujitsu. He wants to pass this onto his kids, especially his daughter Charlotte.
"I've always found that jiujitsu is the best martial arts for women because the position of being on your back with an aggressor between your legs," he said. "As a jiujitsu practitioner, that guy's in a lot of trouble."
For his son, he wants to encourage him to box. However, Prinze doesn’t see as much value in that for his daughter. "They don't even teach her how to punch," he said of jiujitsu. "But she will know how to take someone down (whether they're bigger than her or not) with leverage."
Gellar Mocked Prinze's Spinal Surgery Recovery
Back in 2014, Prinze shocked his fans a bit when he announced that he was recovering from spinal surgery.
The road back to full health, according to Prinze's Twitter, required him to learn how to walk again. He posted pictures of his process and had some fun with it all, but you could tell that he took the injury and surgery very seriously.
So, how did Gellar cope with all of this? Well, she pretty much mocked his attention-seeking claims.
Even TMZ picked up on Gellar's seeming lack of interest in her husband's recovery, pointing out pictures of her not waiting for him while they walked together, as well as her lack of social media posts about his health.
However, Gellar did talk about it eventually. In an interview with People, she was asked about his health. “You mean ‘learning how to walk'?" she clarified with a laugh. "I can’t even … I’m not joking, our mail woman – God bless her heart – was like, ‘I prayed for you, Freddie, and it worked, you’re walking.'"
She went on to explain that his "learning how to walk" comment was a little playful and got taken too seriously.
"He’s fine,” she assured fans. “He did have very serious surgery, there’s no question, but his learning how to walk again has been greatly exaggerated.”
They Both Had Hard Childhoods
Looking at how successful they became, many fans just assume that Gellar and Prinze had easy lives growing up, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
Prinze's childhood was scarred by the passing of his father, and he moved around quite a bit.
Having trained in martial arts, Prinze recalls lashing out violently toward other kids, especially after he moved to California.
"I was 12 and I lost it. I got into a lot of fights at school," he said. "I would seek out the biggest, toughest guy and punch him until he would cry because I wanted him to feel what I was feeling. It took a long time for me to work that out. I was 18 when I started trying to work on being a better human being rather than an angry one.”
For Gellar, her childhood challenged her because of her acting experiences. Discovered as a young girl, Gellar acted in commercials and the other kids teased her for that.
"Growing up, I always felt different from other kids," Gellar explained. "They would always tease me about my work in commercials or TV as a way of putting me down.”
Perhaps it's experiences like these that led Gellar to become the incredible role model for female strength that she is today.
Both Lacked Fathers In Their Lives
One of the things that this power couple have in common is that both of their fathers weren't present in their lives while they were growing up.
For Prinze, his father Freddie Prinze, who was a famed comedian best-known for his show, Chico and the Man, passed away from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1977. Prinze was just a baby when this happened.
Expectedly, his father's passing, according to Prinze, greatly shook up the entire family and left a huge void in their lives. Prinze even credited his fatherless childhood as one of the reasons why he puts so much stock in being a good father himself.
Gellar's story is quite a bit different. Her father, Arthur, divorced her mother when Gellar was seven. From that point on until his passing, she remained estranged from him.
In 2001, her father passed away in his apartment, but Gellar still refused to speak on the matter.
She did mention him once in an interview with TV Guide, saying, "He is not a person who exists in my life … I don't have a father. I would never give him the credit to acknowledge him as my father."
Still Hanging Out With '90s Stars
Actors often become close with other actors, that's to be expected, since they can relate to each other. However, in the case of Gellar and Prinze, what's normal doesn't always hold true.
While they do have actor friends, most of their group is from outside of Hollywood. However, they do have some close companions from the industry and, as it turns out, most are also stars from the '90s.
Two of Gellar's best friends are her co-stars from Cruel Intentions, Selma Blair and Reese Witherspoon. While Blair and Gellar occasionally share social media posts of them hanging out together, Gellar mentioned that her son and Witherspoon's sons are best friends and often carpool together.
Gellar is also long-time friends with '90s star Shannen Doherty. The former Beverly Hills, 90210 star attended Gellar's wedding back in 2002, and Gellar is supporting her now as she battles breast cancer.
Prinze's friend group is notably smaller, but he still hangs out with a few actors, all of which seem to also be '90s stars.
This group of friends includes Chris Klein, who Prinze admits is one of his best friends, David Austin Green, who has been spotted hanging out with Prinze, and Matthew Lillard, who has been great friends with the family since he, Prinze, and Gellar starred in Scooby-Doo together.
They Both Worked On Star Wars Rebels
Though he's voiced a few other minor characters as well, many Star Wars Rebels fans know Freddie Prinze as the voice of Kanan Jarrus. Heck, the younger generation probably know Prinze best for this four-year stint on the animated show.
The self-professed Star Wars nerd is a big fan of the new age of Star Wars, and he participates in the fandom in as much as he can.
However, one of the greatest compliments that Prinze can give to the franchise is that he also brought his wife on board. In season two of Rebels, Gellar was cast as the Seventh Sister.
While Prinze may be responsible for getting his family interested in the series in the first place, Gellar is a fan herself.
"Yeah, I’m a Star Wars fan," she said to Buzzfeed. "I think it hits you on an emotional level. It’s good versus evil, and love, and triumph, and equality. And that’s not gender-specific."
She continued: "What’s great about Rebels is, it’s a family show. You have these great female characters in Hera and Sabine. They have their own stories and their own powers. They’re different, they’re cool, and they fight for good, which of course ultimately is what you want your children to do."
"I’m now part of the lore and legend of Star Wars. That’s what people dream of. The same way that I still talk about the original movies — that I’m now part of the story of Star Wars — it’s really special," she stated.
The Key To A Happy Marriage: Separate Bathrooms
When Harry Connick Jr. asked Gellar to give fans a silver bullet for a happy marriage on his show, Harry, her quick answer showed how close her response is to her heart.
"Separate bathrooms," she said with a smile. Sure, you may think she's joking, but Gellar went on to explain a little more and, it seems like she's on to something.
"I feel like there are certain things that should just be kept your own and they never need to know," she added.
Now, this can be reduced to bodily functions, but, at its core, the comment points to privacy and individuality that Gellar feels is necessary for a healthy couple.
While Gellar and Prinze do most things together, they still manage to find ways to keep some mystery in their relationship.
Privacy is something that Gellar, and many other stars, know a lot about. After all, Gellar's been accused of child abuse from internet mom-shamers after she posted a harmless video of her son getting a manicure with her.
It's stuff like this that makes Gellar want to keep things private from the media.
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Can you think of any other secrets behind Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr.'s marriage? Sound off in the comments!