Holding It Down! 15 Secrets of Celeb Couples Who’ve Stayed Together For Years

6. Angela Bassett & Courtney B. Vance

The love birds, who married in 1997, not only know how to make love last – they wrote a book about it. The couple, who met at the Yale School of Drama, discuss their relationship in Friends: A Love Story, which details how allowing themselves to be friends first set the foundation for their long lasting relationship. For Courtney, being a husband and having a peaceful marriage means keeping his wife happy at all times, wholeheartedly buying into the “happy wife, happy life” theory. “I want that smile everyday. What I had to realize was that she’s first, and when the queen is happy, the land is happy.” Angela says they have ground rules that they never break in order to keep the peace, including watching her tone and the words she chooses when they argue, and Courtney promising to never raise his voice. They also agree that divorce is not an option. Angela says, “He said that we would have to fight through it to get to the other end of it. It was really wonderful.”