Denise Richards and her husband make it a point to do this one thing every month.
Charles Sykes/Bravo
Denise Richards prioritizes monthly staycations with her husband, Aaron Phypers, for quality time.
Richards emphasizes the importance of dedicated couple time, especially for new parents.
Celebrity couples like Gordon Ramsay also prioritize personal time to strengthen relationships.
Denise Richards makes sure to have quality time with her husband, Aaron Phypers, despite their hectic schedules.
The “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star told Interview magazine that the secret to keeping her relationship strong is to have dedicated time together.
“And my advice, especially to couples who just had a child, is to do a staycation at least one night a month, even if you don’t have kids,” Richards said. “Just so you can have your romance, no distractions, and just reconnect as a couple.”
“We have made a point of doing that one night a month at least, just to have that time for ourselves and not feel guilty about it,” Richards said.
Richards and Phypers have been married since 2018. She has two daughters, Sami and Lola, with her ex-husband, Charlie Sheen. She is also a mother to a daughter, Eloise, whom she adopted as a single mom in 2011. Since then, Phypers has also adopted Eloise.
Reflecting on her marriage to Phypers, Richards says that their relationship works because they accept each other as they are.
“He’s my best friend and we don’t try to change each other,” she said.
They’re not the only celebrity couple who’ve established rules around protecting their personal time together.
“In our relationship, having little kids again, our present to each other on our last anniversary was, we have to go to the theater once a month, and we have to go out three times a month, and we’re not allowed to wear trainers,” Tana Ramsay said during a podcast in 2024. The couple have been married since 1996 and have six children together.
Research has shown that having strong personal connections can lead to increased happiness, better health, and even a longer life span.
But creating a strong, healthy relationship requires effort.
Several married couples who have been together for over four decades previously told Business Insider that their top tips for a successful relationship include being active outside the house, growing together, and expressing gratitude often.
A representative for Richards did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular hours.
In an interview with Elle published on Monday, French Gates spoke about the dissolution of her marriage to the Microsoft founder.
“Look, divorces are painful, and it’s not something I would wish on any family,” French Gates told Elle.
The philanthropist, who shares three children with Gates, said that ending her marriage was one of the hardest yet most significant decisions she’s ever made, per Elle.
French Gates also said she was not interested in dating at the moment.
“But again, I knew when I got divorced, I would be okay on my own. And I think that was the most important thing,” French Gates said.
She had a hopeful answer when asked what she wanted someone to know about her if they Googled her five years from now.
“She’s thriving on the other side of a divorce,” French Gates said. “Just thriving.”
French Gates’ comments come after her ex-husband told The Times in January that their split “was the mistake I most regret.”
“You would have to put that at the top of the list,” Gates said when asked if the divorce was his only failure in life. “There are others but none that matter. The divorce thing was miserable for me and Melinda for at least two years.”
The Microsoft founder added that he and French Gates still see each other at family events.
In the wake of their split in 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that French Gates had been seeking a divorce since 2019 when it was publicly revealed that Gates had met with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein multiple times. There were also reports of Gates’ extramarital affairs during his tenure as Microsoft CEO.
In a 2022 CBS interview with Gayle King, French Gates described her emotions after the divorce and said she was “grieving” the loss of something she thought she had for a lifetime.
“I had a lot of tears for many days,” French Gates said, recalling how she would lie on the floor and think, “How can this be? How can I get up? How am I going to move forward?”
The author (not pictured) got married again after having two kids.
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I married my college sweetheart and we divorced two years later.
I was left wary of marriage and said I’d only get married if I had kids. Then, I met Craig.
We knew we wanted to be together, and years after having two kids, decided to get married.
My first marriage imploded two years in. Looking back decades later, I realize that I just wasn’t ready. I married my college love at 25. We were together for six years before we got married. Two years later, our marriage was over.
I met Craig in December 2002. I was separated at the time, and I wasn’t looking for another relationship. Of course, life doesn’t always hand us things when we’re ready for them. Before our first date, I asked the grandmother who raised me what she thought.
“I think you should go,” she said. The break-up of my marriage — something she thought would last forever — hadn’t been easy for her or my grandfather. They loved my ex and had paid for my fairytale wedding. Getting the OK from Gram mattered to me.
We were always together after our first date
Our first date started at the bar where we met. Craig was a bouncer and DJ there. He ordered a drink. I ordered a shot. We both wore gray tweed coats. A few weeks later, we’d find out we had matching red puffy coats. It seemed fated. He would also tell me he felt time stopped when he saw me for the first time, and he knew then that I was the one.
I assumed it was a line, but a few months into our relationship, one of his female roommates relayed the same story. The night we met, he took my number down on a piece of paper he’d torn from one of the bar’s cash registers. He still has it in his wallet 22 years later.
After our first date, we were always together. We just knew. Craig’s humor matched mine. He wanted to write comedy for television, and I wanted to be a director. We planned to move to Los Angeles with a brief pit stop in Maine, where he grew up. We would use our time there to save money. After moving in with his parents, I got pregnant.
We had two kids and then we bought our house
Realistically, staying close to our roots (his in Maine, mine two hours away in Massachusetts) made more sense than moving across the country with no friends, family, or jobs. A cross-country move simply wasn’t feasible with a child on the way. We got jobs and an apartment. We set up the nursery and had a baby shower. Zach was born in January 2005.
When Zach was 11 months old, I found out I was pregnant again. We used our tax return money to put a down payment on a small Cape Cod-style house in a neighborhood filled with similar homes. Cameran was born in September 2006.
The logical step before children would have been to get married, according to everyone we knew. I had already done that and would only do it again if I had children. Once the kids came along, I knew marriage would come eventually. The Catholic grandmother who raised me was beside herself. “You have two kids, get married already,” she would beg.
Finally, we had a small wedding at City Hall
In August of 2008, we got married by a woman named Karen at our local City Hall. Our engagement was brief, and Craig asked me to marry him while we sat on the couch watching the kids play one evening after work.
Unlike my first wedding, there was no fancy hotel reception. My brother was my man of honor, and Craig’s younger brother was his best man. I bought a simple dress at Macy’s. It was black with polka dots, and I thought it made me look like a 1950s sitcom wife. Our ‘reception’ consisted of pizza from Craig’s favorite pizza place with the kids. It was a bit last minute; my grandparents didn’t even come.
There was no honeymoon, and 17 years later, it still hasn’t been one. Instead, we’ve taken two family vacations to Florida. We keep saying that one day soon, we will go away, just the two of us. Maybe it will be for our 20th anniversary. I’m not sure. We’ve never really followed a traditional relationship timeline.
What was important to me this time around wasn’t the wedding, and I didn’t care so much about getting married just to be in a marriage. The kids and the home were the commitment. They were the reason we pushed through the rough patches. They were our “til death do us part,” not some bloated ceremony at a hotel surrounded by friends and family. Marriage was a legally binding promise to do whatever we had to for our kids and our family. They were the reason the word meant anything at all to us. They still are.
Jacob Hoff and Samantha Wynn Greenstone got married in 2024. Hoff is gay, and Greenstone is straight, but they say theirs is not a “lavender marriage.”
Jacob Hoff and Samantha Wynn Greenstone
A gay man and a straight woman got married after being together for eight years.
Jacob Hoff and Samantha Wynn Greenstone are in a “mixed-orientation” marriage.
BI checked in with them 18 months after our first interview to find out about their married life.
Growing up gay and without examples of successful marriages in his family, Jacob Hoff didn’t think he’d ever get married — let alone to a woman.
But in November last year, Hoff, 31, married his longtime girlfriend, Samantha Wynn Greenstone, 37.
When Business Insider spoke to the LA-based couple in 2023, they explained that they were in a “mixed-orientation” relationship, meaning that they have different sexual orientations. Hoff is a gay man, and Greenstone is a straight woman.
The two musical theatre performers started off as best friends, but started dating in 2017 when Greenstone admitted that she had romantic feelings for Hoff and he realized he felt the same way.
They’ve now been together for eight years in a monogamous relationship, and decided to tie the knot last year.
BI caught up with them to ask about their wedding, future plans, and whether the way others see them has changed.
Hoff and Greenstone put their own ‘campy’ stamp on wedding traditions
Hoff and Greenstone married after being together for eight years.
Jacob Hoff and Samantha Wynn Greenstone
After so long together, getting married seemed like the natural next step, Hoff said.
Greenstone is Jewish, so Hoff converted and they got married at the Kabbalah Center in Boca Raton, Florida.
The wedding featured traditional Jewish elements, such as a chuppah, a canopy the couple stood under during the ceremony, and a ketubah, a marriage agreement that outlines the man’s financial responsibilities to his wife.
“But then we added elements of our campy personalities into it and made it really irreverent and wild,” Hoff said.
He walked down the aisle to a “blood-curdling scream” from “The Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack, he said, while Greenstone vowed to go to Hoff’s favorite Mexican restaurant whenever he wanted.
“Everything we did in the wedding felt like it was authentic and reflective of our personalities,” Greenstone said. “But it was also important to us to keep some traditional elements. For example, we liked the idea of not seeing each other in our wedding outfits.”
“But I was there when she was getting her hair and makeup done, so there was balance,” Hoff added.
Hoff and Greenstone are in a “mixed-orientation marriage” and say they are both very much in love.
Jacob Hoff and Samantha Wynn Greenstone
No ‘lavender marriage’
The term “lavender marriage” is used to describe a union where one or both partners are LGBTQ+, but marry for the safety or convenience of appearing to be heterosexual.
Hoff and Greenstone say that the label does not apply to their relationship.
“We’re truly soulmates and monogamous,” Hoff said. “I’m 100% fulfilled by our marriage. So to say we’re in a ‘lavender marriage,’ I think, takes away what this really is, which is just people who love each other for who they are and not what they are. A lavender marriage feels like a marriage of convenience versus a marriage of just true pure love like ours.”
He previously told BI that he finds Greenstone “very beautiful” and that their physical intimacy is “so much deeper and richer and more fulfilling” because his attraction to her isn’t just “surface level.”
Hoff identifies as gay and says his attraction to Greenstone is a ‘one-off’
The marriage hasn’t changed anything for Hoff and Greenstone other than solidifying their “spiritual” connection with a contract.
Hoff said it’s made other people take them more seriously. For Greenstone, it’s important that her husband holds onto his identity as a gay man because of the work they’ve had to do to be “out and proud” about their dynamic.
Hoff still uses the label “gay” because he identifies with gay culture and his attraction to Greenstone is a “one-off,” he told BI in 2023. He said he could “never imagine being with another woman.”
Joe Kort, a sex and relationship psychotherapist who specializes in mixed-orientation marriages, previously told BI that he calls this dynamic “gay plus one.”
That is when a man is gay but is emotionally attracted to and turned on by his female partner — just like someone might be with a partner who is not their usual type.
The couple plans to be open about their sexualities with any children they might have.
Jacob Hoff and Samantha Wynn Greenstone
Greenstone still identifies as heterosexual but does consider the relationship to be queer because, to her, queer means “stepping outside the realm of what society considers normal.”
The couple plans to be honest about their relationship if they have children.
Hoff said: “My thought is just to raise the kid always knowing that I’m gay. I think it’ll be normal as long as it’s not hidden. They’ll understand from an early age that dad’s gay, just like dad has brown eyes.”
Normalizing different relationships
The couple say they’re so public about their relationship to help normalize such arrangements.
“It feels good to share. It feels liberating, and it makes me feel understood in the world as opposed to walking around with this elephant in the room,” Hoff said.
Couples in similar positions have contacted them for advice. However, Greenstone said she doesn’t feel comfortable advising other women to pursue their gay friends — firstly, because they might not be attracted to them, and secondly, because she doesn’t want anyone to feel pressured into a straight-presenting relationship.
“We’re not preaching ‘go and marry your gay best friend,”” she said. “We just want people who find themselves in a mixed-orientation relationship to see that it can have longevity.”
During Wednesday’s premiere episode of her podcast “IMO,” which she cohosts with her brother Craig Robinson, the former first lady spoke about one of her husband’s habits that used to get on her nerves.
“Barack, you know, he had to adjust to what ‘on time‘ was for me,” Obama told Robinson.
“Because he was on that island time,” Robinson interjected, referring to the former president’s Hawaiian roots.
Obama said it bothered her that her husband would often only start getting ready when it was time to leave for their appointments.
“You know, I’ve got this husband who’s like, when it’s time to leave, it’s 3, he’s getting up and going to the bathroom. And I was like, dude, dude, a 3 o’clock departure means you’ve done all that, you know? It’s like, don’t start looking for your glasses, you know, at the 3 o’clock departure,” she said.
However, he tries to keep himself in check these days, she said.
“But he’s improved over 30 years of marriage,” she said. She added that her daughters, Malia and Sasha, know to be early if they are doing anything with her.
In 2014, using public data posted on the White House website, The Washington Post reported that the former president was over 35 hours late to his scheduled engagements that year.
In a 2018 interview, Obama shared that she had a bad impression of Barack Obama when they met at a Chicago law firm in 1989 because he was late for their first meeting.
“I was like, is he trifling? The black man’s going to be late on the first day? I was like, ‘Um,’” Obama told ABC News’ Robin Roberts.
Punctuality is often touted as a key to success.
One such business leader who believes in punctuality is Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group.
“If you want to be more productive, then start at the start: get there on time,” Branson wrote on LinkedIn in 2015. Not only is it a show of respect to others, it is also a way to effectively manage his day, he said.
“Of course, everything doesn’t always go to plan. It isn’t always possible to be on time, but it is always possible to try. When I find myself running late, I will often quite literally resort to running,” Branson wrote.
Representatives for the Obamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular hours.
