CELEBS WHO GOT HITCHED WAY TOO YOUNG
Everything is super over the top in the world of showbiz, and relationships just serve to highlight this. Stars getting joined at the hip is nothing new, and when they go from newly dating to newlyweds in a matter of months, we barely even bat an eyelid these days.
However, some of the following examples of young love turning into wedding bells will shock you, not necessarily because of the names involved, but because of the incredibly young ages these stars got hitched. You might have thought that the recent marriage of Justin Bieber (24) and Hailey Baldwin (22) was a little extreme – honestly, that’s nothing compared to this lot. These A-list celebs were all barely out of high school when they tied the knot. Many of them weren’t legal to drink or even vote, but they were still deemed mature enough to make the huge life decision that is lifelong commitment to another human being.
Of course, many of these relationships were doomed to fail. And we can hardly blame them, as they were all just kids after all. But still, don’t we all love to hear a good tragical romance story? Shakespeare made his name writing this sort of stuff, and these are all genuine versions of his works, played out on the biggest stage of all: real life.
So, without further ado, let’s, well, see the teenage brides…?
KIM KARDASHIAN AND DAMON THOMAS
Did you even know Kim was married before she settled down with Kanye? Nope, me neither. Wait, she was married TWICE before? Blimey, that girl’s been busy.
Kardashian ran off with music producer Damon Thomas in the year 2000 at the tender age of 19, to get married in the classically romantic Las Vegas. All LA marriages end well, right? Not this one. The marriage lasted three years before the pair were divorced.
According to court documents leaked by the Daily Mail in 2010, Thomas was physically and verbally abusive towards his wife. He apparently slammed her against walls, threw her across rooms, and even punched her in the face. He funded her liposuction and plastic surgery obsessions so she could look “perfect”. However, Thomas had the last laugh in 2014 when he did a no-holds-barred interview with In Touch Weekly, where he declared his ex-wife was a “fame whore” who did harmful things just to validate herself in public.
Four years later, in 2018, Kardashian hit back on her show “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”, when she revealed she wasn’t thinking clearly when she got married in the first place as she was on drugs at the time. She said she got married on ecstacy. Hardly a ringing endorsement, eh, Thomas? Ouch. We can feel the burn from here.
Kardashian also married former basketball star Kris Humphries in 2011, but again it ended in tears and the pair split in 2013. In fact, while the marriage lasted two years, they actually filed for divorce only 72 days into the marriage. So, compared to those two botched attempts, it turns out that perhaps her combination with Kanye really may be happily ever after…
MACAULAY CULKIN AND RACHEL MINER
Child star Macaulay Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998. The pair were not even adults yet, each being just 17 years old.
These two met when they were both students studying at the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, and apparently, if the New York Daily News is to be believed, they’d only been dating a matter of months before agreeing to tie the knot. Being so young though, they needed permission from both sets of parents. You know you’re young when you still have to ask your mum’s permission!
They claimed they were both so happy and proud of finding each other at such a tender age, and “looked forward to spending their lives together” and a lot of other soppy things kids say. Playbill reported that they were married on June 21, 1998, in a ceremony involving close friends and family in Connecticut. Sounds idyllic.
Like many marriages of kids though, it didn’t last too long. Two years later they announced they were divorcing, but apparently they remained “best friends”. Whether that’s true or just a break-up story to soften the blow to each other, who knows. “We’ll still be friends” is the sort of thing many young guy hears when he’s dumped, right?
DEMI MOORE AND FREDDY MOORE
So THIS is where Demi Moore got her famous name. Born Demi Gene Guynes, the acting star married Freddy Moore waaay back in 1980 aged just 17. Freddy was 12 years older that Demi – but as we all know now, age differences don’t really phase the stunning actress, who later wedded Bruce Willis (six years her senior) and later Ashton Kutcher (an incredible 16 years her junior).
Back to Freddy, though. The couple’s marriage only lasted a measly year before the inevitable divorce came along, which coincidentally was around the time that Demi started dating Emilio Estevez. She was even engaged to marry Emilio too, but called it off before it got that far. Probably for the best.
Demi hasn’t spoken much about her first marriage in public, but Freddy certainly has. He opened up to Australia’s NW mag in 2018, claiming that they “hooked up” when Demi was aged only 16, in 1979, when she was already in a relationship with her boyfriend Tom. Apparently, Freddy claimed that the pair fell in love instantly and she ditched Tom to run off with Freddy immediately. Freddy, in fact, had to leave his wife to marry Demi.
Well, it looks like Demi had a bit of a habit of falling for blokes and then leaving them shortly after, as is the way with young lovers. Just 12 months later Freddy would know what it felt like. There’s some sort of poetic justice in this story somewhere if you look hard enough.
LEANN RIMES AND DEAN SHEREMET
Singer LeAnn Rimes married Dean Sheremet in 2002 when she was only 19 years old. This one is a little more positive, as the marriage lasted seven years before they announced they were getting a divorce. Apparently Rimes had an affair with Eddie Cibrian, which does sound plausible as Cibrian’s wife, Brandi Glanville, announced at exactly the same time that she was divorcing him.
Sheremet discussed his split with Rimes on an episode of Personal Space, saying that it was devastating but also provided him with the biggest growth of his life. He was 21 when the pair got hitched so again, perhaps a little too young to take on such a big commitment, and he mentioned how he didn’t really know himself at that age. However, he did concede “We were in love, and it was the right thing at the time.”
Rimes herself later wrote a song about her marriage to Sheremet, and specifically her cheating on him. It was called “What Have I Done”. She told Karie Couric that she carried a lot of guilt for what she did.
SOLANGE KNOWLES AND DANIEL SMITH
Beyonce’s sister Solange was a baby at 17 when she married her high school lover Daniel Smith, who himself was 19 at the time. They had a small ceremony in the Bahamas, attended by close friends and family. Only a year later Knowles was giving birth to the couple’s son, Daniel Julez J Smith Jr. The family then moved to Moscow, Idaho, where Smith, a football player, was still attending college.
However, like all of the stories here, it ended in tragedy when the couple announced in 2007 that they were separating. Knowles spilt the beans in an interview with Essence, and she later told Elle magazine that the move to Idaho was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “It was a bittersweet moment,” she said, “I was isolated and lonely and I needed to get out.”
Knowles said she didn’t regret marrying Smith, despite the subsequent divorce. She loved having a child at a young age and told Harper’s Bazaar seven years later in 2014 that she “feels older than 27 in a lot of ways. Going through both a marriage and divorce by 21 gives you such an insane perspective on life.” Amen, girl.
MELANIE GRIFFITH AND DON JOHNSON
Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson knew each other for four years before they got married. They actually met on the set of The Harrad Experiment when Griffith was still a child at 14, with Johnson eight years her senior at 22.
So, four years later they were married, but it was an extremely short affair with the divorce papers being issued only six months later. The Hollywood Reporter took the scoop this time, with Griffith telling them the marital problems were down to drug and alcohol addictions – on both sides. She was sad that the marriage ended and told the outlet that “He was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my entire life.” Her mom wasn’t so keen, though, and she told the publication she had been in sheer panic when she discovered her young baby had fallen for such an older man.
Ten years later though, the pair got back together. 1989 saw the couple remarry and then quickly have a daughter. You may have heard of her: they named her Dakota Johnson. Still, this time, while it did last some years, they again separated in March of 1994. Then they got back together, again, later that year. Then they separated, again, in May 1995, officially divorcing in 1996.
Exhausting stuff, eh? Unsurprisingly, in a 2018 interview with InStyle, Griffiths claimed that marriage doesn’t mean all that much these days and “isn’t relevant”. Shock, horror.
BO DEREK AND JOHN DEREK
Actress Bo Derek caused a huge scandal when she married at 18, to a man an incredible 30 years older than her.
Bo actually ended up not finishing high school, so she could remain in Europe with the older man, dodging statutory rape laws. How romantic. When she turned 18, she returned to California to marry. Surprisingly, it actually lasted a while and they pair remained married until John died in 1998.
Bo spoke to Interview about the marriage some years later and admitted that she felt terrible about meeting John while he was still married to another woman. She felt she did the wrong thing, and won’t ever forgive herself for stealing someone else’s man. Yet, in another interview, this one with Larry King, she described their marriage as “fantastic, we had so many things going against it, first and foremost his age, but then 25 years down the line it was clearly meant to be.” So, it appears she has mixed feelings about it all if she’s honest.
MILLA JOVOVICH AND SHAWN ANDREWS
Actress Milla Jovovich was only 16 when she got hitched to Dazed and Confused co-star Shawn Andrews. That’s the name of the show they were in, not a description, in case you were wondering.
Director Richard Linklater claimed that the pair were married for about a month before Milla’s mother stepped in and insisted on an annulment, due to her daughter’s tender age. In an interview with The Daily Mail some time later in 2011, Jovovich said she had ran off as a romantic gesture to Vegas to marry Andrews, but also as a bit of an F you to her mom. “I wanted to prove a point,” she said. Which, it appears, was a failure then, if it was mommy who cleaned the whole thing up within a month.
Jovovich also said, strangely, that she wanted a bank card. “I was a big girl,” she said, “and I wanted to properly establish myself in adulthood. I was working like an adult and being treated like an adult by everyone but my mom.” She admitted it wasn’t really about being in love, but more trying to prove a point to the world. A point well made, we think…
OLIVIA WILDE AND TAO RUSPOLI
Olivia Wilde was only 18 when she eloped with Tao Ruspoli in 2003. To be fair, who wouldn’t want to run away with an Italian prince? Ruspoli’s family owns Rome’s Palazzo Ruspoli, if People are to be believed.
The couple spent a happy eight years together before the divorce came this time, in the spring of 2011. Then the truth came tumbling out, as usual in these cases. Wilde said they had been crazy to get married in the first place. However, she said they’d done so because they were head over heels in love and it made them happy at the time. To be fair, eight years of happiness is probably worth the pain of a divorce, we reckon.
Wilde said it was incredibly difficult leaving someone with whom she had spend most of her 20s, such an important part of anyone’s life. Wilde described the day she knew the divorce was on the horizon as “the worst of her life” in her interview on The Conversation with Amanda De Cadenet. She said she was “terrified” of leaving Ruspoli, which is understandable. Imagine that transition from princess to pauper again. Truly frightening.
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