10 Things You Didn’t Know About Ben Stiller And Christine Taylor’s Relationship

Published on September 13, 2017. Updated March 21, 2018

Fans were shocked when Hollywood couple Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor unexpectedly announced their split after 17 years of marriage. Not only had they been together for what seemed like forever, but they’d also worked together on several successful movies, raised two children together and managed to maintain a fairly private relationship while in the limelight. We don’t know much about what happened because they’ve kept pretty tight lipped on the whole separation, but it’s obvious these two shared a wonderful marriage and fans are sad to see another great couple bite the dust. We’re not ready to let go of these two just yet, so here’s a look at 10 things you probably didn’t know about their relationship!

10. How They Met

They first met back in 1999 on the set of a pilot for the show Heat Vision and Jack which never got picked up. Up until their recent split, these two had been together for 17 years! They got married in 2000 shortly after they first met and now share two kids, Ella and Quinlin. They continued to work together on films like Zoolander and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and Tropic Thunder.

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9. The Moment Ben Fell In Love

From the way Stiller describes things, he fell for Christine pretty quickly, so fast that it caught him off guard! “[Christine and my] relationship was a gradual thing that happened over a quick period of time, maybe seven or eight months. We just started hanging out with each other and it developed into, ‘Wow, this feels great. I really like this person. I think I love this person. I really do — I love this person.’ It hit me out of the blue,” he said in an interview with Parade.

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8. Asking Permission for Her Hand in Marriage

Sometimes life imitates art and it seems that was definitely the case for Christine and Ben! In an interview with Parade, Stiller said while working on the film Meet the Parents, he was going through literally the same thing as his character in the film. “I proposed to Christine when I was rehearsing Meet the Parents…I asked her father for permission before I did it….It was like Meet the Parents in real life, because Christine’s father is an intimidating guy who owns a security company; we’re good friends now, but at the time I was in the basement rec room saying, ‘I really would like to marry your daughter…’ He’s a man of few words but he was very welcoming. I was more nervous asking him than asking her,” he said.

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7. Cool Parents

It would be pretty cool to have two Hollywood actors as parents, but even more so to have both parents star in some of the best comedies of all time! While we might think so, apparently Taylor and Stiller’s kids don’t agree. In fact, Taylor revealed that their kids think they are “dorks.” According to Taylor, their kids are getting older so no matter what they do their kids get embarrassed by them. “I said to my daughter, ‘You can talk to me about anything. I’m a cool mom. You don’t have to be embarrassed. You can tell me anything.’ And she goes, ‘You just saying that made you uncool,'” joked Taylor.

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6. Long Lasting Marriage

Even though these two aren’t together anymore, it doesn’t discredit the fact that they spent 17 years married! Not only is that an impressive feat for any couple, but it’s even more impressive in Hollywood! Back in 2014 at a Project A.L.S. event, Taylor and Stiller were asked how they make it work. Taylor replied: “It’s all change for the better. Right? We’re older, we’re wiser. I found a picture of us from 15 years ago, and I saw youth. You don’t see [the change] on a daily basis. We looked like kids. Now we look like parents.” Stiller then chimed in and said, “We’re hopefully getting better.”

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5. Most Fun Thing About Being Married to Ben

We’re pretty sure there were a lot of amazing things that came with being married to one of Hollywood’s funniest actors, Ben Stiller, but one of the best was the way he interacted with fans. Zoolander remains one of Stiller’s most popular films so it’s not surprising to learn that he is constantly asked to jump into character by doing the famous ‘blue steel.’ “Our son has gotten really good, but mine is so bad! Ben does the whole routine — it’s one of the most fun things about being married to him, because people just yell ‘Blue Steel!’ at him on the street, and he does it in a heartbeat,” said Taylor in an interview with Good Housekeeping.

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4. What They Both Get ‘Geeky’ About

In that same interview, Christine Taylor opened up about what she and Ben like to do in their spare time. When they aren’t working or busy being parents, they are in the stands at a New York Knicks game. Admittedly, they both get super star stuck. “We are giant uber geeks for the big tall guys. I’m like, ‘Oh my god there’s Carmelo Anthony.’ Those athletes I am in awe of. We get to meet a lot of cool celebrities and amazing people, but those professional athletes are amazing for the both of us – we get very geeky,” said Taylor.

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3. Ben’s Proposal

After awkwardly asking Christine’s father for permission to propose which he did in the basement of her parents’ house while they were over for dinner one night. Once he got her parents’ blessing, he pulled out all the romantic stops for the big proposal and totally surprised Christine. “I thought he was in New York working on Meet the Parents, and then I showed up in L.A. at my house, and he had opened the house and had a whole surprise for me. I had no idea,” she said in an interview with New York magazine. “It was very fairy-tale; it was beautiful.”

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2. They Help Each Other

In an interview back in 2015, Ben admitted that people think he’s funny because his wife, Christine helps edit all of his jokes. “We trust each other. We get each other. You can’t do comedy in a vacuum. You need people to react. It’s hard to stay current to whatever the current hipster hipness is. Pop culture moves so quickly now and people’s attention spans are so short,” he said.

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1. Working Together on Dodgeball

One of the cutest things about their relationship was how much these two loved working together. They teamed up for a lot of Stiller’s best movies like Meet the Parents, Zoolander and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. In a joint interview with IGN, Stiller reiterated how much fun they have on set and how it actually helped their relationship. “We had fun, we were laughing a lot, we got to spend time together which was good. When you’re working, you don’t get to do that. And she, we just connect on that level, where we like, we laugh at the same things, so it was actually really fun and therapeutic. It’s always good to throw balls at each other. It would be good therapy, good couple’s therapy,” said Stiller. According to Christine, Stiller actually did accidentally hit her in the head with a dodge ball a few times on set!