Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we examine the celebrity couples who give us hope for our own romantic futures as we try to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
While I gleaned more than my fair share of life advice from Barbra Streisand’s 2023 memoir, there is perhaps even more to be learned from the renowned EGOT winner’s nearly three-decade-long marriage to the actor James Brolin. I mean…for two famous people, that is a very long time!
Streisand (who turned 84 today!) and Brolin met in 1996, at a dinner party thrown by Streisand’s friend Christine Peters, who was eager to set them up. “I didn’t know much about him, so she quickly filled me in. He had played the young, motorcycle-riding Dr. Steven Kiley in the TV series that made him famous, Marcus Welby, M.D., but I had never seen it,” Streisand recalls in her book. Another role of his, however—Peter McDermot in the soap opera Hotel—put a very specific picture in her mind: that of “a handsome man with dark, thick, wavy hair and a neatly trimmed beard.” So when she saw Brolin in person—and he was in fact “clean-shaven, with a buzz cut”—she was nonplussed, leading to a truly iconic opening line. When the two sat down to eat, Streisand—in her inimitable, straight-shooting, native New Yorker style—ran a hand over Brolin’s head and asked, “Who fucked up your hair?” Needless to say, he was charmed.
Brolin and Streisand at the New York premiere of her film The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1996.
Photo: Getty Images
At the Los Angles premiere of Meet the Fockers in 2004.
Photo: Getty Images
The couple made their red carpet debut later that year before marrying in their LA backyard in 1998. Now, a few decades later, they are doting grandparents, with Brolin’s son Josh telling People in 2018: “My wife got Barbra a bracelet that said ‘Grandma’ on it and she started crying. She is really into it, and I love that she is into it. I mean, it’s like a very typical Jewish grandmother who is saturated by this event. It’s awesome.” Aw! We love you, Bubbe Barbra!
Even sweeter? Streisand and Brolin’s relationship inspired not only her 1999 album A Love Like Ours, but also—somewhat improbably—the Aerosmith song “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” As songwriter Diane Warren explained in 2016: “Someone told me there was an interview with Barbra Streisand and her husband, and he had said how he doesn’t like to go to sleep, you know, because he misses her. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a cool idea for a song if I can figure that out.’”
Well, figure it out she did, and now Streisand and Brolin have a permanent place in rock history—not to mention in the canon of true Hollywood love.
