The Secrets of Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard&x27;s Epic Love Story 0 Share Natalie Finn Thu, October 22, 2026 at 7:00 AM UTC Originally appeared on E! Online Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are the couple you want to go on a road trip with. And not only because Shepard will handle all the driving. Rather, the Armchair Expert podcast host and Bell, whose zeitgeistenrapturing Netflix comedy Nobody Wants This returns for a third season Oct. 22, just seem like a really great hang.
The Secrets of Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's Epic Love Story
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Natalie Finn Thu, October 22, 2026 at 7:00 AM UTC
Originally appeared on E! Online
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are the couple you want to go on a road trip with.
And not only because Shepard will handle all the driving.
Rather, the Armchair Expert podcast host and Bell, whose zeitgeist-enrapturing Netflix comedy Nobody Wants This returns for a third season Oct. 22, just seem like a really great hang.
"We understand each other's highs and lows and excitements and complaints," the Emmy-nominated actress said on SiriusXM's Andy Cohen Live in October. "We're both creative, so we can get deep into some random conversation and just feel like we're creating something together."
But even when they're creating with other people, no one is cheering harder for the other to get after it.
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard: Romance Rewind
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“One thing that I love so much about being married to him,” Bell told People in February, "is that he is never allergic to me shining more and more. He never gets insecure about it.”
Which isn't to say it's all roses, the 46-year-old acknowledging that she and Shepard—parents of daughters Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11—have been married "a long time" and they "work at it."
Kristen Bell/Instagram
And if this sounds almost too well-adjusted to be true, the couple have also been candid about going to couples counseling, the "incredibly toxic" pattern of fighting Bell admittedly engaged in early on, what they still bicker about and the times they almost broke up (as well as the one time they did)—as well as about all the work that goes into keeping their marriage healthy, lest anyone think that their 18-year relationship runs on wisecracks alone.
Though they do find each other hilarious. Most of the time.
"The only thing that I remember is that he talked so much. I was like, ‘This guy can talk!'" Bell said in 2019 on the Sunday Sitdown With Willie Geist, recalling their "no sparks whatsoever" first meeting in 2007 at Forgetting Sarah Marshall producer Shauna Robertson's birthday party. "I didn't know who he was. I was like, ‘Maybe that's one of the guys from Jackass or something."
AP Photo/Matt Sayles
Serendipitously, about two weeks later, Michael Rosenbaum brought Shepard with him to a Los Angeles Kings-Detroit Red Wings game, where a newly single Bell was also in attendance.
Shepard started talking to the Veronica Mars actress while Rosenbaum was busy talking hockey, as Bell chided the Smallville alum on a 2018 episode of his podcast Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum, then asked his fellow Michigan transplant if he could have the gum that was in her mouth and held out his hand.
Unbeknownst to Bell, Shepard had taken the liberty of getting her number from Robertson after the party that left the Frozen star initially unimpressed.
But after about two months of dating, Shepard broke up with her.
"We were on the road to something serious," Bell recalled to Rosenbaum, "and he said, 'I want to be very responsible with you because I really respect you. I'm still dating other people.'"
"In retrospect I realize how respectful that was, even though it broke my heart at the time," she added. "He wasn't going to continue to sort of date me like a real relationship and then have other dates on the side."
She was admittedly "devastated," but woke up the next day determined to keep having a good time as a single gal.
Four days later, Shepard called and said he'd made a mistake.
Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images
Bell still had her reservations, not least because he had a lot of stories about his more reckless days—and was friends with "pretty much" all of his exes, Shepard recalled on his YouTube series Mom's Car, which she admittedly found "'really wild'"—and he loved to reminisce.
On Sept. 4, 2025, Bell shared a carousel of family photos to mark her husband's 21 years of sobriety. But, she told Rosenbaum, "I had a lot of fears when we first started dating because he had a very wild past."
She explained, "If he has one sip of beer, there is a different person behind the wheel of his brain."
Therapy helped them realize that Bell needed an assurance when he told stories that "scared the s--t" out of her that those days were behind him, and Shepard obliged.
But they also fought "a lot," and Bell has admitted her fighting style wasn't the greatest.
"When we first met," she told Harry Connick Jr. on Harry in September 2017, "we fell madly in love and I love the dramatic exit. There is nothing I crave more."
So, she shared, "I'd yell something and then slam the bedroom door, then I'd slam the front door, then I'd get in my car and then I'd skid out the driveway and I would sit around the corner in my car and it felt so good—and I realized how incredibly toxic it was only after he pointed it out."
"Three months into our relationship," she continued, "he was like, 'You can't leave anymore during fights. I'm not going to do that.' I was like, 'What?' He's like, 'You can't do that.'"
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Shepard "has a very high standard and a strong code of ethics," Bell said. "He was like, 'No, I have more respect for myself. I love you but I'm not going to do that my whole life.'"
Though while Bell agreed not to peel off from a fight, she still had to come to terms with sharing Shepard with the other love of his life—his 1967 Lincoln Continental.
"Lady Lincoln," Bell told Clever Movies while promoting their 2012 film Hit and Run. "She's been in Dax's life for 12 years. I have respect for the females that are my alphas, and ahead of me. I love her."
"She's your sister wife," Shepard interjected. Bell agreed, "And I'm fine being a sister wife. We have a great relationship."
Kristen Bell's Best Roles
In 2018, Bell estimated they had logged about 20,000 miles on road trips—but their respective travel styles were also something they had to hash out early on in the relationship. For instance, Shepard wanted to tow his Polaris RZR with them everywhere they went, even when he had no plans to use it.
"My one daughter has a Lambie, my other daughter has a blanket, my husband has a thousand-pound off-road vehicle," Bell quipped on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "And I...you know, have my vape pen."
They got engaged in 2009, but then announced their intent to tie the knot only after same-sex marriage was legal throughout the U.S.
Proposition 8, rescinding the right in California, had just passed in 2008. Shepard noted that they knew many gay couples and "it would not be nice to dunk on our friends."
The couple subsequently enjoyed a long engagement, welcoming Lincoln on March 23, 2013. Three months later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, paving the way for legal same-sex marriage in all 50 states—and Bell re-proposed that day.
They still didn't make a spectacle of their nuptials, swapping vows at a courthouse with only a few witnesses in attendance.
Delta was born Dec. 19, 2014, Dax having paved the way for her name when he surprised Kristen one night by coming home with a bell inked on his ring finger with a "K," an "L" and a "D," even though Delta hadn't arrived yet.
And then they got to the business of, as Bell put it in a post celebrating Lincoln's 13th birthday in March, "the real stuff."
She told Collider in 2010 that she was a workaholic, "but I think your significant other should be way more important than your work."
And she doesn't care who knows it or what people think of such an arrangement.
"I would do everything together," Bell told Moviefone in March 2017. "I'm not sitting in the audience of my life. I'm not watching how I'm being perceived, I'm not tracking how I'm being perceived. I don't really care. I care if I wake up happy and I go to bed happy."
That, of course, remains a lofty goal for anybody.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Because as much as Bell wants "to be with and work with my husband," she also wants to do her own thing.
For instance, Shepard thought Bell being his guest on the February 2018 premiere of Armchair Expert would be a slam dunk. But, he later shared on Conan, "It was a disaster right out of the gate"—as Bell was eager to go to the crafts store that day.
Listening to the recording later, "I thought I was a little controlling, but it was vomitous how controlling I was," Shepard said. "And I really thought I should hide this from the public, and then I later thought, No, this is the whole thing. Sometimes we're in Samsung commercials canoodling at Christmas time, and sometimes we're screaming at each other about Michael's. That's just how it is."
On Valentine's Day that year, Bell offered up a handwritten primer that, as "an old married woman," she felt might be beneficial to share.
Remaining vulnerable with your partner, appreciating the privilege of having a partner, remembering to take time for yourself and remaining open to new ways of addressing problems when they inevitably crop up are some of the imperatives she listed that have worked for her and Shepard.
Meanwhile, she knows that they're in the spotlight, both as celebrities and as a #goals-inspiring couple. And admittedly she does feel pressure at times to not let anyone who's rooting for them down.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
"It is a lot of pressure," Bell told E! News in April 2018. But, she continued, "I highly doubt we will ever break up because we're just in too deep and I like him too much. Even when he's annoying, I really like him. I'm still like, 'I still want to be on the porch with you when I'm 80, but I really need you to get out of my face right now.' And we have a good, healthy back-and-forth about that."
And that dynamic has allowed both of them to flourish.
"I married my polar opposite," Bell told E! in 2024. "We are the antithesis of each other. We argue about absolutely everything, but there is a foundational trust that we've built that keeps us together and is quite stimulated by one another's opinions."
She reflected, "Being with someone who you are unlike or you don't have a ton of similarities with, it forces you to grow."
See Bell and Shepard's ever-evolving romance in photos:
Who Is This?"Who is this sparkly creature?'" Dax recalled thinking when he met Kristen at a friend's birthday dinner in 2007. After running into each other again two weeks later at a hockey game they decided to accept fate and start dating.Opposites Attract
The old saying rings true for this couple, who both had doubts to go along with the butterflies early on. Dax said his playboy past didn't go unnoticed by "good girl" Kristen, who toldGood Housekeeping, "We're the Paula Abdul video 'Opposites Attract' personified."The Engagement
The two got engaged in late 2009 while co-starring inWhen In Rometogether. They weren't immune to the romance of the Italian city and just like in their movie, the couple fell under a real life love spell.Snuggling Sweethearts
In an interview about her relationship with Dax in 2010, Kristen shared,"A snuggle party can fix anything—it's true."The Wedding
The couple got married in a simple ceremony at a Beverly Hills courthouse in 2013 after announcing their plans to wed on Twitter earlier in the year. Their choice to forego an extravagant wedding made their love story even more romantic to fans.Next Comes the Baby Carriage
Bell gave birth to their first child, a girl they named Lincoln, in March 2013. Fiercely protective of her daughter's privacy, Kristen quipped, "I would really like to see the aftermath of the first person who tries to take a picture of Lincoln."Parents of Two
In December 2014 the couple had their second daughter, Delta.The Plot Twist
In an interview withGood Housekeepingin May 2015 Kristen shared that she and her hubby attend couples counseling when they need to work through an issue saying, "Therapy is not something to be embarrassed about."Instagram Official
Kristen Bell finally joined Instagram in 2016 and inaugurated her account with a closeup of her and her husband sharing a kiss.Happily Ever After
The two looked just as in love as ever at the premiere of Dax's new movieChipsin March 2017.NEXT GALLERY: Julianne Hough & Brooks Laich: Romance RewindHappy Fourth!
They two celebrated the 2017 Fourth of July holiday in style.Keepin' It Real
The pair continues to prove that they're just like any other couple. They openly share that they go to marriage counseling and sometimes fight. However what remains constant is their respect for each other. Kristensharedher marriage advice on Instagram writing, "Loving someone despite their faults, failings, or character defects, is the most powerful loving thing you can do. Rejoice in what makes the other person happy and allow them their individual interests."Humor Is Key
A couple that isn't afraid to be silly together is a couple that stays together. The pair often shares hilarious shots on social media including when theydressedupfor aPeaky Blindersthemed birthday party. Of course, they killed it.Everybody Wants This
Kristen celebrated Dax's 50th birthday in 2025 with a carousel of photosshowcasing a samplingof their affectionate moments."Happy birthday to the most affectionate 220 lbs man that ever [existed]," she wrote. "I cannot imagine life without you."
(Originally published June 1, 2018, at 3 a.m. PT)
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Published: October 23, 2026 at 03:00AM on Source: RED MAG
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The Secrets of Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard&x27;s Epic Love Story 0 Share Natalie Finn Thu, October 22, 2026 at 7:00 AM UTC Or...
