Courtney B. Vance, Angela Bassett ‘The Preacher’s Wife’ Premiere Ziegfeld Theater, NYC December 9, 1996. (Photo by Patrick McMullan/Getty Images)
The photo above is from the year before Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance said “I do.” The couple met at Yale’s School of Drama and went on to marry in 1997. They have welcomed two children, Slater and Bronwyn, birthed via surrogate in 2006, and have been each other’s biggest fans since day one. But their love story wasn’t as straight and simple as we’ve made it sound.
They didn’t make a love connection happen in graduate school, but when they crossed paths again in 1994, they decided to give each other a shot.
“We went out and dare I say it, it wasn’t memorable,” Bassett said on The Oprah Winfrey Show back in 2007 while promoting their book, Friends: A Love Story.
“He just seemed like a really, really nice guy, which translated to, ‘Kind of boring,'” she joked. “That was it. Wasn’t going to give him a second thought.”
But she did, and the second date went much better. The couple went out to play golf.
“We had a great time. It was a great date,” Vance shared. “I said, ‘I like her.’ Something was happening.”
He eventually asked to be her boyfriend via a note, and it moved the Oscar-nominated actress.
“I saw his heart in the note and we had spent that time together, that week together and I think I began to see the heart of the man and it was intriguing.”
And a kiss sealed the deal for Bassett. As she wrote in the book about their first big kiss, “He kissed me. I felt like a teenager. It was truly reminiscent of my first puppy love kisses. I got pin pricks and chills up the back of my thighs — and across my butt. Up my neck, across my scalp. There were these electrical impulses coursing through me. Courtney was a good kisser.”
And they ended up being a good match.
The rest is history, and here they are, 21 years of marriage later. Check out their love story in photos by hitting the flip:
Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance during Cicely Tyson Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage)
