Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates: All About the Actors' Decades-Long Marriage

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight for actors Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, but their fateful first meeting has led to more than 30 years of marriage.

The pair met at an audition in 1982 and married seven years later. They went on to welcome two children, raising them in their home base of New York City.

However, Kline initially had some doubts about their compatibility. ”When I first met Phoebe, I remember thinking, ‘She’s too happy to be with me,’ ” the actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2002. “ ‘She’s too enthusiastic about life. .... What’ll we talk about?’ ”

While Kline and Cates keep their love story fairly private — and Cates herself has mostly retired from acting — they continue to be one of Hollywood’s beloved pairs.

Here's everything to know about Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates’s relationship.

They met at an audition

Cates, who was fresh off the success of the iconic teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, met the classically trained theater actor Kline at a read-through for the movie The Big Chill in 1982. Cates wasn’t cast, but Kline was, and the role has become one of his most famous. Their paths would cross again a few years later at the New York Public Theater, where both actors were working on different projects. They started dating shortly thereafter.

They have a 16-year age gap

Kline was 41 when they married, and Cates was 25, which Kline addressed in a 2014 interview with The Guardian. "I was 40-ish when I finally stopped obsessing about acting and thought it would be nice to have a life and actually got married," he explained. "If I had married someone my own age, the possibility of progeny would have been very slim. I didn't consciously say: 'Hey, we could make babies; want to get married?' It just happened that way."

Cates and Kline married in 1989

The actors were married on March 5, 1989 in a super private ceremony in New York.

They have two children

The couple’s first child, Owen Joseph, was born in 1991. A daughter, Greta Simone, followed in 1994, and Cates put her career on hold to raise the children.

”We have agreed to alternate so that we’re never working at the same time,” Kline shared in 1998. ”Whenever it’s been her slot to work, Phoebe has chosen to stay with the children.” Kline said that he prefers to work, but admired the fact that his wife was happy taking a step away from the spotlight. "That was one of the many things I loved about her," he explained. "She loved acting while she was doing it, but she was not driven by it, as I had been."

Cates, Kline and their kids appeared in Cates’s Fast Times costar Jennifer Jason-Leigh’s The Anniversary Party in 2001.

Today, Greta is a member of the band Frankie Cosmos and Owen works in the film industry; he also acted in 2005’s The Squid and the Whale. “One of the good things about having your parents in this job is that there’s no mystique to show business,” Kline said of his children’s Hollywood pedigree.

The family may be busy pursuing their own projects, but they see each other frequently. “We have dinner all together once a week at least,” Kline shared of their weekly ritual. “The kids haven’t banished us from their lives.”

They live in New York

Despite their public careers, Kline and Cates live a relatively low-key life in New York City. They’re occasionally photographed at premieres, awards ceremonies (including the Tonys and the Oscars) and basketball games together, but keep their relationship mostly out of the spotlight.