Kirk Douglas' Marriage With His Wife Anne Lasted Nearly 70 Years

Mar 01, 2020 by apost team

Kirk Douglas starred in nearly 100 movies but he was also famous for having one of Hollywood’s longest-lasting marriages.

A Hollywood marriage lasting six-and-a-half decades is a rarity. Kirk and Anne Douglas can give us hopeless romantics some hope. At the time of the actor's death in February 2020, they had been married for more than 65 years.

Kirk wrote an article in The Los Angeles Times detailing their love story. The two met in the City of Love, Paris, in the 1950s. Kirk was already a famous movie star and Anne had just fled Nazi Germany. She was working at a film studio doing translation work. She declined Kirk’s dinner invitation, saying she’d stay in and eat scrambled eggs but did end up joining his production and the two courted in France and Italy. 

apost.com

“The fact that I didn't impress her certainly impressed me, and I was determined to win her over," he wrote in The Los Angeles Times.

Once he returned to the States, he invited Anne to come for a visit. Afterward, she said she was going back to Paris. He then realized he didn’t want to lose her and isn’t proud of how little thought he put into their wedding. 

He wrote in The Los Angeles Times:

“I was making "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" for Walt Disney, working six days a week. I left the studio on a Saturday afternoon and picked up Anne, my lawyer and my publicist, and we flew to Las Vegas. Anne and I joined our lives before a hastily summoned justice of the peace. I was eager to get the vows over with so I could take everyone to my pal Frank Sinatra's show at the Desert Inn.”

Everyone loved Anne, he said, including Kirk’s first wife and their two eldest sons, Michael and Joel, and she has stuck by Kirk’s side no matter what. 

"Anne has saved my life more than a few times," the actor writes. "She refused to let me join Mike Todd on his fateful flight east. We stopped speaking over that one until we heard the news the next morning. Elizabeth Taylor became a widow, but not my Anne. When I had my stroke 17 years ago, she drove me to the hospital like a Formula One racer. And when I wallowed in self-pity because of my impaired speech, she made me get up and work with a speech therapist.”

Kirk still wrote Anne love poems to the very end. For their 60th wedding anniversary, they renewed their wedding vows during the celebration.

“Anne looked as glamorous as she had the day she walked into my life in Paris, and I was proud to be by her side,” Kirk wrote in The Los Angeles Times. 

When asked how his marriage had lasted so long, he said:

"I just told my wife, 'if you ever leave me, I'm going with you!'"

The two lovebirds were rarely seen apart and still seemed inseparable even after 65 years of loving marriage.

You can watch their love story in the video below:

We're happy these two love birds were still going strong when Kirk passed away at the incredible age of 103. Do you know a couple who has been married for so long? What is their secret? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you pass this along to your friends and family.