Rita Wilson Opens Up About What Made Her Fall In Love With Husband Tom Hanks

Published on April 8, 2020.

Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks are one of the most beloved famous couples in Hollywood, and while many people love Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson recently opened up about what drew her to the actor.

On Tuesday, April 7, Wilson’s pre-recorded episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show aired where the 63-year-old actress and singer talked about life with her husband and what happened when they first met.

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Clarkson commented to Wilson that she was surprised by how chatty Hanks, 63, was when he appeared on her show last year because many view him as quiet and a man of few words. Wilson revealed however that his talkative nature is one of the things that attracted her at first. “It was one of the things, when we met, that we just got along instantly,” she shared.

“First of all, I love a good storyteller,” she said. ” So anybody who could tell a good story, I’m down with that.”

Sharing that she grew up in a “very vocal” Greek household, the actress explained she didn’t mind Hanks being very chatty as “food and talking … was pretty much our existence” for her family.

“I love that. He makes me laugh all the time,” she said of her husband. “He’s a great storyteller.”

During the interview, Wilson also opened up about how the pair handled her breast cancer diagnosis back in 2015. Wilson admitted that after the diagnosis she had to learn to “wrap your head around your own mortality” and added that she had two requests for her husband in the event she were to pass away.

“I wanted to have these very serious discussion with my husband and I said to him, ‘Look, if something happens and I should go before you, then I just want you to know that there’s a couple of things that I want,” Wilson, who is now cancer-free, said. “One is that I want you to be super sad for a really long time … like, I will haunt you.”

“The second was that I wanted a party. I wanted to have a celebration, and I wanted to have a lot of singing and dancing and people telling stories, and to feel like that was being celebrated,” she shared, explaining how the idea served as the inspiration behind her song “Throw Me a Party.”

Hanks and Wilson first met in 1981 on the set of Bosom Buddies, and reunited on the set of Volunteers in 1985. Following Hanks split from his first wife Samanthan Lewes in 1987, with whom he shares son Colin Hanks and daughter Elizabeth, Hanks and Wilson married in 1988. Together they share two sons: Chet and Truman.