Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker Make a Surprise Announcement

Matthew Broderick was born on March 21st, 1962, in Manhattan’s West Side, New York City. His mother was Patricia, a playwright, actress, and painter, while his dad, James, was an actor and World War II veteran.

He and his two sisters attended the City and Country School in Manhattan before attending high school at Manhattan’s private Walden School. Matthew first caught the acting bug in high school plays and decided to attend the HB Studio, New York’s renowned acting school.

Sarah Jessica Parker was born in Nelsonville, Ohio, on March 25th, 1965. Her parents were Barbara Keck, a nursery school teacher, and Stephen Parker, an entrepreneur and journalist. Sarah’s parents divorced when she was three, and her mother married truck-driving account executive Paul Forste. Sarah had seven siblings between the two marriages, including actors Timothy Britten Parker and Pippin Parker.

Her mom and stepdad moved to Dobbs Ferry, New York state, and Sarah studied singing and ballet in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and New York’s School of American Ballet.

Matthew’s first major theater role came opposite his father in Horton Foote’s On Valentine’s Day. The young star stated, “Before I knew it, I was like this guy in a hot play. And suddenly, all these doors opened…” Tragically, James Broderick passed away in 1982 before his son became a film star.

Matthew first played a hacker in 1983’s Wargames before starring in 1985’s Ladyhawke. Then, in 1986, Broderick landed his most iconic role. He played the title slacker in John Hughes’ seminal ’80s coming-of-age movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Matthew dated his Ferris Bueller co-star, Jennifer Grey. On August 5th, 1987, while holidaying in Northern Ireland, he swerved their rented car into the wrong lane and crashed head-on into another car. Tragically, the mother-and-daughter occupants of the other vehicle lost their lives instantly.

Broderick suffered a fractured leg and ribs, a collapsed lung, and a concussion. He was charged with causing fatalities by dangerous driving. But instead of receiving five years in prison, he was convicted of careless driving and fined $175.

Regarding girlfriends, Matthew’s high school sweetheart was actress and future Mrs. Kevin Bacon, ​​Kyra Sedgwick. Oh, and Remember Matthew’s first stage role in Horton Foote’s On Valentine’s Day? Well, while shooting the 1985 film adaptation, he dated the writer, Horton Foote’s actress daughter, Daisy Foote.

Then, in 1987, Matthew starred in Project X, in which he and Helen Hunt free chimpanzees used in secret Air Force projects. Broderick and Hunt dated for about a year after bonding over bonobos.

Sarah’s first stage role was appearing with four of her siblings in a St. Louis, Missouri, production of The Sound of Music. She made her Broadway debut aged 11 in the 1976 revival of The Innocents. In 1979, she played Annie; by 1984, she danced with Kevin Bacon in Footloose.

SJP appeared in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and Flight of the Navigator, which should have starred Matthew Broderick but didn’t. In 1991, she starred with Steve Martin in the underrated LA Story.

Matthew wasn’t the only one who dated fellow Hollywood stars. In 1984, SJP dated Michael J. Fox before he became famous as Back to the Future‘s Marty McFly. Next, she dated Hollywood bad boy Robert Downey Jr. from 1984 to 1991, once saying, ​​” I believed I was the person holding him together.”

Sarah had a busy 1991, dating John Kennedy Jr., singer-songwriter Joshua Kadison, and Nicolas Cage. But as winter descended on New York, everything was about to change for the better.

After returning from The City of Angels to her home in the Big Apple, Sarah Jessica Parker met Matthew Broderick for the first time on a chilly, windswept night in November 1991. Although both actors had been working in Hollywood, they were actually introduced by SJP’s brothers.

Toby and Pippin had founded New York’s Naked Angels Theater Company. Matthew Broderick directed a play at the theatre group, and the siblings thought he and Sarah might make a good couple. And they were right!

Talking to the New York Times in 1996, Sarah revealed the shy young actor eventually asked her out on February 1st, 1992, by leaving her a voicemail: Matthew “left a very charming, very self-effacing message on the machine… You know, ‘Hi, it’s Matthew Broderick.’ You had to use your last name!”

A few weeks later, their first date was a movie trip. Hopefully, they saw something cool from that year, like Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, not Sylvester Stallone’s Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!

Sarah knew Matthew was her soulmate almost from the moment she saw him. Three decades after they first met that cold and dark New York night, she appeared on an episode of her best friend’s TV show, Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.

During the Valentine’s Day 2022 appearance, a flirty Andy Cohen said he thought his BFF Sarah would make the perfect Valentine, but SJP insisted she knew Matthew was her Mr. Right from the get-go.

Two months later, Matthew appeared on WWHL with Andy Cohen and recalled the moment he knew that Sarah Jessica Parker was The One. He explained: “Oh, the first time I met her… I saw her walking down the street and thought, ‘That’s it.’”

Broderick fell for Parker and her lovely, curly blonde locks the minute he saw her. Later in the same interview, Andy asked Matthew what he most admires about his wife. He replied, “Humor and wisdom.” Awww, bless his cotton socks!

Their first kiss outside a New York apartment building was uneventful. But their second kiss was straight out of Sex and the City! SJP explained that as Matthew leaned in for their second kiss, she had to spit out the Ricola boiled sweet she was sucking on!

“It was the dead of winter, and I thought — well, it just seemed like a third party. So I spit it out into my gloved hand because I was getting on the subway… It was stuck on my glove.”

Matthew was already a screen veteran, having appeared in Biloxi Blues and Glory. Then, in 1994, he voiced Simba in The Lion King. Meanwhile, Sarah had appeared in Honeymoon in Vegas, Striking Distance, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks, and perhaps most famously played a witch in Hocus Pocus alongside Bette Middler and Kathy Najimy.

Then, in 1996, the couple appeared together for the first time on Broadway in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, for which Broderick picked up a Tony Award.

On the eve of making their Broadway debut together, Sarah told the Los Angeles Times, “He’s probably the funniest fellow I’ve met in my whole life. He’s so bright, so handsome. I think he’s the most handsome man I’ve seen in my life. And he inspires me. I’m mad for him, totally.”

She later told People magazine, “At one point, I just simply remember thinking, ‘God, I really hope he asks me to marry him.’ I don’t know when or why. It was fairly early on.”

Sarah Jessica Parker’s wish to marry her beau came true just a few years later. On May 19th, 1997, she and Matthew Broderick married at New York’s Angel Orensanz Synagogue. Matthew’s sister, Reverend Janet Broderick Kraft, officiated the ceremony.

The couple invited about 100 friends and family but didn’t tell them they were getting married. Instead, they pretended it was just a regular party. And instead of wearing a traditional white wedding dress, she wore a black wedding dress.

In one interview, SJP said, “I never thought about a wedding dress. Never. Had not one daydream about it.” In another interview with best bud Andy Cohen, she admitted, “I just was too embarrassed to spend any time looking for a wedding dress. There was a store that I liked that I knew, and I just went and got whatever they had hanging.”

Or maybe she didn’t wear white because she was trying to tell us she wasn’t such an innocent girl! Speaking of which…

As Matthew starred in Godzilla, Election, and Inspector Gadget, Sarah’s long-term agent, Kevin Huvane, landed SJP her most famous role. She played fashionista, columnist, and serial cheater Carrie Bradshaw in HBO’s hugely popular comedy drama Sex and the City, based on Candace Bushnell’s books. The show ran for six years and two movies.

Carrie Bradshaw became one of TV’s greatest female characters. SJP bagged two Primetime Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Some years later, Sarah reflected on her time on Sex and the City in a New York Times profile. She confessed that she used to “get so nervous” when her husband would visit her on the SATC set. She’d tell co-stars Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis whenever Matthew showed up: “Matthew’s here! Don’t look at me… It’s all so embarrassing!”

SJP was probably so because she was nothing like Carrie Bardshaw’s narcissistic character and didn’t want her husband to see her acting like that.

Sarah Jessica Parker was already famous for her movie roles, but Sex and the City skyrocketed her to worldwide stardom. With global fame, little old SJP from Nelsonville, Ohio, became a true international fashion icon for the turn of the millennia.

At the height of the show’s popularity in 2000, Parker hosted the MTV Movie Awards, during which she famously and hurriedly changed into and out of 14 different outfits. Talk about a quick change!

After SATC wrapped, Parker signed a $38 million deal with Gap. From 2005, she released her own perfumes, Lovely, Covet, Dawn, Endless, and Twilight. In 2007, she launched her Bitten fashion line with discount clothing chain Steve & Barry’s. The actress has also launched the SJP Collection footwear line at Nordstrom and became Jordache Jeans’ spokeswoman.

More recently, she partnered with Gilt to launch a ready-to-wear bridal collection, produced a range of New Zealand wines, and curated an accessories collection with Lele Sadoughi.

Five years after walking down the aisle, on October 28th, 2002, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick welcomed their first child, a baby boy. They named him James Wilke Broderick after Matthew’s late father.

The media-shy couple successfully kept their children out of the spotlight. James is a student but recently made his TV debut in a blink-and-you-miss-it role, playing a country club valet in Natalie Portman’s TV series, Lady in the Lake.

Speaking with The Edit magazine years later, in 2016, Sarah recalled giving birth to her son. She said, “If I could revisit one moment in my life, it would definitely be the birth of my children. It’s the greatest!”

Trying to describe the miracle of childbirth, she explained, “There is this suspended animation around… everything goes away; the entire world is sucked up; time suspends. It’s just you, and in my case, my husband, and this child, and it’s absolute euphoria.”

After his Tony win, reinvented musical star Matthew Broderick was hatching his miracle. He starred with Nathan Lane in the 2001 Broadway production of The Producers. He played accountant Leo Bloom, who co-produced a musical designed to fail but was a massive hit.

The Broadway show won 12 Tony Awards, making The Producers the most nominated show in history. Sadly, Matthew was nominated for Best Actor in a Musical but lost out to Nathan! Both actors reprised their roles in the 2005 film adaptation.

Remember how SJP had grown up with seven brothers and sisters? Well, she didn’t want James to be an only child. Then, on June 22nd, 2009, Sarah and Matthew welcomed twin girls, Tabitha Hodge and Marion Loretta Elwell, born via surrogate. Sarah chose their middle names for her maternal ancestors, as she discovered in Who Do You Think You Are?

Tabitha and Marion’s favorite film as kids was Hocus Pocus. Now that they’re teenagers, they have occasionally made red carpet appearances with their parents and older brother.

A year after they had the twins, Sarah opened up to Vogue magazine about their fertility struggles and her pregnancy. She explained she and Matthew “tried and tried and tried to get pregnant… but it just was not to be… the conventional way. I would give birth as often as I could if I could. I cherished all the milestones, the good and the bad.”

Sarah was already in her 40s, and they couldn’t conceive the traditional way. So, they turned to surrogacy via donor eggs.

In 2010, Matthew also appeared on NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? More than two decades earlier, he had appeared with Denzel Washington in Edward Zwick’s 1989 Civil War film Glory.

He was surprised and emotional to discover that his mother’s great-grandfather, Robert Martindale, was a Union soldier who fought at 1863’s Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. Sadly, in 1864, Matthew’s great-great-granddad lost his life in the Battle of Atlanta and was buried in an unmarked grave in Georgia.

Carrie Bradshaw would be the last person you’d turn to for relationship advice, but Sarah Jessica Parker is a veritable fountain of knowledge. In a 2011 Telegraph interview, SJP admitted that, like any couple, she and Matthew have ups and downs.

The actress explained, “We’ve been together for 20 years, and you have good days, you have decent days, and you have bad days. That’s a marriage. That’s a relationship. That’s a friendship, even — relationships outside marriage run the same course.”

In another interview for the September 2013 Harper’s Bazaar magazine issue, Sarah elaborated: “I love Matthew Broderick. Call me crazy, but I love him. We can only be in the marriage we are. We’re very devoted to our family and our lives.”

She continued, “I love our life. I love that he’s the father of my children, and it’s because of him that there’s this whole other world that I love.” The only way you might be crazy, SJP, is — in the words of Beyoncé — crazy in love!

While Broderick tends to keep a lower profile than his wife, he appeared on a 2014 episode of the Meredith Vieira Show. He said the reason his relationship with Sarah works so well and they have stayed together so long is because they communicate effectively.

“We really are friends beyond everything else, and we talk a lot. I guess I know how cliché that is. Too much silence is definitely not a good idea.”

In 2017, Sarah and Matthew celebrated 20 years of marriage. SJP posted a wedding photo on Instagram, saying, “It flew by, Baby. Good golly, I love you. XXX, Your wife.” The next few years did fly by. Sarah starred in Did You Hear About the Morgans?, New Year’s Eve, and starring in and producing the TV show Divorce.

Meanwhile, Matthew took a break from musical theater to return to the small screen to play protagonist Michael Burr in Netflix’s comedy-drama Daybreak.

Then, in 2021, Sarah returned as Carrie Bradshaw in HBO Max’s Sex and the City sequel, And Just Like That… Carrie was joined by Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis), but Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) didn’t show up until the second season.

This time around, the girls were in their fifties and faced a whole new set of trials and tribulations, and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) even showed up! However, fans of the original series and critics slated the unnecessary and inferior series.

In 2022, Matthew and Sarah reunited for their Broadway show, Plaza Suite. Broderick told the Wall Street Journal, “We very rarely both work at the same time. This is the first time since we’ve had three children.”

When they’re not working, the celebrity couple renovates their two West Side townhouses, which cost $35 million, where Matthew grew up. When they’re not in New York, they spend time at their second home in County Donegal, Ireland, ​​where Matthew spent his childhood summers.

Broderick also admitted he got cold feet about starring alongside his wife in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite. He told United Airlines Hemispheres magazine, “The fear is that I don’t want [us being] a real couple to make you not believe the fantasy of it. I want it to be a believable play.”

He continued, “So I always get scared that you might not get lost in the play enough.” Luckily, any wobbles he had soon faded: “But as soon as we started it, I didn’t feel that.”

Matthew continued his seemingly endless gushing platitudes for his wife: “She’s such a wonderful actor and a wonderful comedian, and people maybe aren’t as aware of her stage chops. They really are something. I think it’s a real pleasure to watch her and be reminded of how good she is at that.”

Finally, he added, “As far as the personal, luckily, we don’t seem to have gotten into any fights that bleed over from the practice into the theater, or vice versa.”

Also in 2022, Hollywood’s most loving couple, that year’s Hocus Pocus 2 star and Matthew Broderick, celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. Sarah shared two throwback photos on Instagram to commemorate their silver anniversary and the massive milestone of being married for a full quarter of a century.

The two photos showed her leaning into her hubby’s chest and their wedding invitation. SJP wrote: “Evening Attire. Silver baby. 25 years. And counting. X, your wife.”

While the couple are notoriously private, SJP explained to Bruce Bozzi on the iHeart podcast Table for Two: “We really do cook five to six nights a week, for sure,” she added, explaining that they aren’t much for takeout. “We have always had a Sunday dinner — we invite people to Genes,” a small but fancy restaurant near their New York home in West Village.

Sarah said, “It’s a portrait of a local restaurant… one of the most beautiful little bars ever. I have the same thing every time.”

In 2024, Sarah and Matthew took their Broadway play Plaza Suite and the six different characters they each portray in the play’s three acts to the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End. Then, SJP took to Instagram to announce her 10 million followers.

Don’t worry; they’re not splitting up! Hell will likely freeze over before that happens. The celebrity couple proved so popular in England that they announced they would stay in London for an extra couple of months.

The announcement didn’t hugely affect James, as the 21-year-old — who has expressed an interest in a music career — already lives away from home, studying Classics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. However, for Tabitha and Marion, staying in London for three months will have been a big change from New York’s West Village.

There was no cause for concern; the twins loved their time in London. After they returned to the USA, they went to the same high school — but only after Tabitha originally suggested they attend different schools!

During an interview on The Howard Stern Show, SJP revealed that she and Matthew have rarely spent any nights apart during their three-decade relationship.

She told the shock jock, “We had our first official date on March 8th of 1992, and we’ve been together ever since. We have never spent a night apart since then, with the exception of work on location, or his mother was ill for a bit, so he went to take care of her, but from that first night, we’ve never been apart.”

Matthew spoke to Bruce Bozzi on his SiriusXM show a few years ago. When Bruce asked what he believed was the key to a successful marriage, Broderick replied, “I don’t know the secret at all, but I’m very grateful, and I love her. It’s amazing.”

The actor then went on to list his wife’s many talents. So, it turns out he knows the secret to a long, happy marriage after all… constant flattery! Watch and learn, guys… watch and learn!