A Hollywood heartthrob and confirmed bachelor
falls for a brilliant, humanitarian lawyer, and eventually, the two create the picture
perfect family. It's the sort of love story you'd expect to see in a filmland fairytale,
and yet somehow in just five short years it's become the real life romance of Amal and George
Clooney. Here's the story of how the dedicated duo
met, fell in love, and built a life together.
The couple met at the actor's Lake Como home
in July of 2013, when a mutual friend stopped by while en route to Cannes with Amal in tow.
In an equally fateful twist, the star's parents were also visiting him at the time, so Amal
was introduced to the Clooney family on the same day she met her now husband.
George, then 52, had cultivated a reputation as one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors
with a dating history including celebs like Kelly Preston and Stacy Keibler, but there
was clearly something special about his connection with the renowned human rights lawyer. “I
got a call from my agent who said, 'I met this woman who is coming to your house, who
you’re going to marry,'” George said. The two hit it off immediately, corresponding
for several weeks before the romance truly blossomed. “She sent some pictures from
when she was here, and we were writing each other, emailing, talking, mostly about what
was going on in each other’s lives,” he said. “And over a period of time it became
clear we were more than just friends.”
The duo's first official date came in October
2013 when George invited Amal, who was living in London, to come visit him at the famed
Abbey Road Studios (best known as a recording home for The Beatles) while he supervised
the score for his 2014 film The Monuments Men. "That was a good first date," he said,
adding: "And pretty quickly, things escalated once I was in London."
"She'd had a conversation with her parents, who were like, 'What are George's intentions?'
And she was saying, 'Take it easy. We've been going out for six months,'" George explained.
All the while he was preparing for the big moment.
After months of planning—down to a playlist of music to accompany the proposal—George
invited Amal to a homecooked dinner on April 28, 2014, hiding the 7-carat engagement ring
inside of a lighter box that Amal used to light the candlelit table. "I did all the
stuff, got down on my knee and did all the things you're supposed to do," the actor said. "I
was waiting for this song, 'Why Shouldn't I?' 'Why shouldn't I take a chance when romance
passes by? Why shouldn't I know of love?' It's a really good song about why can't I
be in love? And it played, and she's like, 'Holy shit!' And she just kept staring at
the ring, going, 'Oh, my God.' It was 20 minutes of me on my knee, waiting for her to say yes,
because she was so shocked."
After a short engagement the couple tied the
knot in September 2014, just shy of a year after their first date. "We didn't tell anybody
else that we were going to do it," Clooney recalled, "but eventually somebody figured
it out. Oh, my God! Once people got wind of it, it became an event." Surrounded by family
(and a few famous friends, including Clooney's long-time collaborator Matt Damon, Cindy Crawford,
and fellow celebrity couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt) the couple wed in a private
ceremony at the Aman Canal Grande luxury resort in Venice, Italy.
“It had never been part of my DNA,” George
said, explaining his stance on fatherhood. “We didn’t plan on it. We never talked
about it until after we were married, which is funny. There was an assumption that we
didn’t want them. And then, after the wedding, we just felt we’d gotten very lucky, both
of us, and we should share whatever good luck we’ve got. It would seem self-centered to
just have that belong to us.” When Amal became pregnant in 2016, the overjoyed
couple got an additional surprise, in the form of twins. "[The doctor performing the
ultrasound] goes, 'Well, there's one.' And I said, 'Great.' And then he goes, 'And there's
the second one.' And I was like, 'What?'" Clooney said. "We just sat there, staring
at that piece of paper they give you, and I kept thinking there was a mistake." But
there was no mistake; in June of 2017, one month premature, Amal gave birth to twins
Ella and Alexander.
Returning to her work representing refugees in September of 2017, Amal has managed to
excel at the office and as a mom. "She is sort of this remarkable human being and now
mother which is something, I suppose, you should assume she would be wonderful at as
well. But, when you see it in person, it makes you feel incredibly proud and also incredibly
small," George said. Coupled with George's creative work and the
2017 sale of his Casamigos tequila brand, the duo remain very busy, but make the time
to dedicate to their children, traveling with them to some of the family's favorite spots
around the globe.