This list was originally published in the Sickness & Health Issue of The Mockingbird magazine. 

The compilers of the first English Book of Common Prayer, published in 1549, based its marriage service on manuals that had been in use in Salisbury and York, and some variation of “to have and to hold … in sickness and in health” has been included ever since. Like us editors, you may have been devotees of the early aughts Tumblr account Old Loves, a scrapbook of famous Hollywood “It Couples” whose bright flames burnt out as quickly as they were ignited. This list of famous couples is its opposite. Though some of these lovers failed their vow to “forsake all others,” they nevertheless endured seasons of sickness and health, for better or worse, to be parted only by death. Their persistent bonds shaped their personal histories as much as the histories we share.

Katharina von Bora & Martin Luther
Known to be judgmental, always on the road, loud, argumentative, poor, and a former priest, Martin Luther didn’t exactly scream eligible bachelor when he proposed marriage to lapsed nun Katharina von Bora. Scandalizing their contemporaries, they were soon married in a simple ceremony and moved into the “Black Cloister,” a former dormitory for Augustinian friars studying in Wittenberg. Their partnership shaped the course of the history of the Protestant church and endured until Luther died in 1546.

Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevskaya & Fyodor Dostoevsky
Just after he began writing Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky hit rock bottom: widowed, penniless, grieving the death of his brother, and whipped with a fit of epilepsy, his shaky hands left the novel’s completion out of reach. Then Anna, one of the most talented stenographers in the region, entered the scene. For twenty-five straight days the couple shared intense dictation sessions until the novel was complete. Unable to imagine his days without Anna, Fyodor then proposed, and they were married for fourteen years until his death.

Marie & Pierre Curie
Marie and Pierre Curie’s “chemistry” led to the development of the theory of radioactivity, which garnered them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Married for only ten years, they were separated by death when Pierre was killed in a street accident in Paris. Marie went on to discover radium and polonium, for which she won the Prize alone.

Bonnie & Clyde
The archetypal partners in crime, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow entered the American imagination with a string of robberies and shoot-outs, before they were eventually caught and killed. As Morrissey famously sang, “to die by your side, well the pleasure, the privilege is mine,” and Bonnie and Clyde are the only couple on this list to have achieved that feat.

Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera
Every couple on this list has an unusual story, but the most soap operatic may belong to the Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, who painted each other in metaphoric scenes for twenty-five years. An early bus accident shattered her spine, pelvis, collarbone and ribs. Recuperating and desperate to be soothed, painting became her spiritual salve. Already famous for his massive frescoes, Diego’s interest in her talents was ignited by her tiny works made from bed. Across multiple affairs, they eventually married, divorced, and married again a year later. In 1954, after many stays in the hospital, Kahlo died. Rivera, who stated that her death was “the most tragic day of my life,” died three years later.

Georgia O’Keeffe & Alfred Stieglitz
From 1915 until 1946, painter Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz exchanged some 25,000 pieces of paper. Over the course of their marriage — with her living in New Mexico and him living in New York — they wrote letters, sometimes three a day, some of them 40 pages long. Though the marriage was anything but usual for the time — with its changes, variations, temptations, an infidelity and, of course, art — it persisted until Stieglitz died in 1946.

Yōko Yaguchi and Akira Kurosawa
While working on Kurosawa’s second film, The Most Beautiful, Kurosawa and Yaguchi clashed over the alleged ways the director treated Yaguchi’s fellow actresses who were portraying wartime female factory workers in Japan. Yaguchi and Kurosawa were constantly at odds, through which, paradoxically, they made a connection that lasted forty years. They married in 1945 while she was two months pregnant and remained married until her death in 1985.

Mildred & Richard Loving
This love story resulted in the landmark Supreme Court case that wiped away the last segregation laws in America. In 1958, Mildred and Richard (with their improbable but perfect last name) were jolted out of their bed in the middle of the night and arrested by police in Virginia, where interracial marriage was still forbidden. When the case finally hit the courts, the judges unanimously ruled in favor of the Lovings. Though they lived very private, quiet lives, their love opened the door for many other couples to be together. Sadly, their marriage was cut short when Richard died in a car accident in 1975.

Linda and Paul McCartney
Wings fans rejoice! Linda and Paul made the list! They first met at a rock club in Soho’s East End when Linda was on a research trip photographing stars for her book Rock and Other Four-Letter Words. To the chagrin of Beatles fangirls everywhere, the couple eventually married. When the Beatles broke up in 1970, the couple recorded the album Ram and eventually formed the band Wings. Huge love songs like “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “My Love” are said to be about their thirty-year love, cut short by Linda’s death from breast cancer.

Joanne Woodward & Paul Newman
If you haven’t seen The Last Movie Stars, the six-part, Ethan Hawke directed documentary about the Hollywood power couple, start there. Hawke makes an honest assessment of Newman’s failures — his first marriage, alcoholism, and temper notwithstanding. When the couple met, Woodward was the star; she had just won an Oscar, and Newman, meanwhile, could barely land a lead role. Over the years, the balance shifted, and he became the biggest actor in Hollywood starring in hundreds of films. Newman died in 2008; Woodward still lives in their family home in Connecticut.

Iman & David Bowie
The gorgeous, glittery, and groundbreaking supermodel and Mr. Stardust had an enduring marriage despite the pressures of celebrity and the scrutiny of the paparazzi. When interviewed about Bowie (who died in 2016), Iman replied, “I think of him all the time. People say ‘your late husband’ and I say, ‘Don’t call my husband late.’”

 

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COMMENTS

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One response to “To Have and To Hold”

1. David Boyd says:

   07/06/2023 at 12:59 pm

   Federico Fellini & Giulietta Masina

   Married 50 years . Federico died the day after their 50th anniversary. Guilietta died 5 months later

   Reply