Danny DeVito and his wife, Rhea Perlman, have been married for 40 years!
However, the couple had broken up and gotten back together so many times that for a while,
it was hard to keep track of whether or not they were even still married.
But despite their decades of marriage together, they've been separated since 2017.
As it turns out, the most surprising news of all is that they're still married,
and they have no plans to get a divorce. In fact, they're actually happily separated.
Get comfortable for this one, Juicers,
because we're going to take a deep dive into Danny DeVito's marriage,
his womanizing ways that drove Rhea to a breaking point, and why getting a divorce is not an option.
DeVito and Perlman met back in 1971 at the performance of the play "The Shrinking Bride."
Danny featured in the play along with one of Rhea's good friends. When the pair were
introduced to each other after the performance, their attraction was pretty much instant.
"Rhea came to see the show, and Rhea saw me." DeVito reminisced about the first night they met.
After the show, Danny shared that they went out to get some food and "hung out a little bit."
"I really dug her," The actor gushed, and Rhea agreed the feeling was mutual.
Perlman said that she was smitten with DeVito as soon as she saw him onstage.
She said, "I had to meet him immediately. I asked
my friend if he had a girlfriend and she said no... I came on to him big time!"
"We were instant," she swooned.
"We spent all night talking," DeVito continued, "and finally, I asked her for her phone number,
and it was a Brooklyn number. So that cinched it, right there."
Just two weeks later, the couple had moved in together. Danny and Rhea went on to work
on quite a few projects together, including the sitcom, Taxi, where DeVito played the
abusive cab dispatcher, and Perlman had a recurring role as his on/off girlfriend.
But we can't forget to mention their most iconic work together in the classic Matilda,
where the couple was cast as the terrible Wormwood parents. It's hard to miss Danny
and Rhea's chemistry, and you can see that they had such a great time working together.
As the years went by, things only got better for the couple.
After being together for 11 years, the couple got married in 1982,
and it didn't take long for them to start a family of their own. Danny and Rhea welcomed
their first daughter, Lucy, just one year after being married. The couple went on to grow their
family even more, when they had another two children, Grace in 1985 and Jake in 1987.
They were a fabulous family of five. Danny's career soared as he took on roles that propelled
him further into Hollywood success. It seemed as though things couldn't get any better.
At the beginning of 2012, DeVito and his wife had been together for around forty years.
When he was asked if he and Rhea were soulmates, he responded, "Oh yeah, that kind of thing,
good friends, best friends, we talk to each other every day, we Skype, all of it."
Just a few months later, the couple made the shocking announcement that they were going
to be separating. What's more, the reason for their split seemed to be Danny's problematic
"womanizing" ways that were beginning to take their toll on their marriage.
It's safe to say that fans were shocked.
However, according to some insiders, the split wasn't as unexpected as people thought.
It turns out that the last ten years of their marriage had been "hanging by a thread"
due to Danny's "flirty and inappropriate" ways.
Rhea had reached a breaking point and could no longer tolerate her husband's "wandering eye."
A source close to the family shared, "He may not appear to be a ladies' man,
but Danny certainly gets a lot of female attention.
Danny can be quite the flirt, and because of his powerful status in Hollywood, he's not
ashamed to abuse his position and chat up young, aspiring women looking to make it in the industry.
According to the source, even though DeVito has an onscreen reputation as a harmless,
funny guy, he was allegedly quite the womanizer.
"Like a lot of red-blooded males, if he sees an attractive girl in a coffee shop or walking
down the street, he will give her the eye." The source continued to explain that after
Rhea had been turning a blind eye to his behavior for years, she finally
snapped. She had enough of his "bad-boy behavior" and wanted to end their marriage.
"The break-up has been on the cards for a long time, probably over 10 years,
because they haven't been happy for a long, long time." The source confessed.
In his interview before they announced their split,
it's possible that DeVito may have been hinting that things hadn't been easy in his marriage.
"We go through ups and downs, but if there is more there than what you
normally think of as romance, you can stick it out with each other forever."
Perhaps the actor knew that despite the tough time in his marriage,
he and Rhea would be working things out eventually. Surprisingly enough,
it was Danny's good friend Michael Douglas that did his best to get them back together.
According to reports, Douglas told DeVito that he would never find another woman like
Rhea to make him happy and that he should do whatever it takes to get her back.
What Michael said seemed to work because, in 2013, the couple got back together.
Sadly, his pep talk didn't work for very long because Danny and Rhea separated again in 2017,
and that time it was for good.
So, the bad news was that they had separated, but the good news was
that they were happily separated and weren't planning on getting a divorce.
Who would have ever thought that that was even possible?
For Rhea, she explained that there was no point in ending things with
Danny officially because they have so much history together, and she truly loves him.
The actress said of her relationship, "I'm not getting divorced. No, no, no. What for?
We do live separately. We see each other a lot too. Danny and I have always loved each other,
and we have three amazing children together. We really agree on almost everything important."
She added that they agreed on almost everything important and that they had been together for
40 years and sometimes it's okay if your partner has to go and do something else.
Rhea explained that things between them were much better now that "all the tense stuff is gone,"
adding that he's not in her face and she's not in his.
However, the actress did confess that their
separation had been difficult for their children at first.
"There was a hard transition through the kids and everything, but everybody's got
a good relationship with Danny and with me and with each other, and that's all we care about."
Rhea even said that she and Danny speak very often, and they didn't want to have to ruin
the friendship that they have now with all the "yucky things that come with a divorce."
And the Poms star also said that they talk very often these days.
Danny shared, "We're friends. We're happy. Everybody's happy. I get to see everybody.
I see Rhea. I see the kids. I just live apart."
It is clear that DeVito and Perlman have a very special relationship,
and that has not changed even though they are now separated. In some ways,
the couple has said they are even stronger now that they live separately and are just friends.
It seems that, while things were difficult initially, now the pair have settled into
the separation and are doing much better. Their personal relationship is not what most people
expect from a separated couple, but it works for them, and that is what really matters.
Even though things in their marriage didn't work out while they were together, they were able to
find a middle ground and respect their marriage and their family by living separate lives.
We all know that relationships aren't perfect, and marriages are hard work - but there also aren't
any written rules on how to make a marriage work. Some couples need to customize their
relationships for themselves and figure out whatever works for them and makes them happy.
It seems like Danny and Rhea did just that. After 40 years together,
they learned that they were better as friends rather than lovers, but they have such deep
respect for one another that they decided to part ways peacefully and in their own way.
We can't help but love them just a little bit more for that.