Love On the Brain: Young & Restless Co-Stars Who Have Dated One Another or Even Married

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Don Diamont and Eileen Davidson

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It wasn’t necessarily love at first sight for these longtime Young & Restless castmates. When they were first playing Brad and Ashley, respectively, in the 1980s, “I really couldn’t stand him,” she admitted to the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1991. Yet it was he who called her about returning to the soap back in the day. One thing (that conversation) led to another (dinner), “then we’d spend lots of time talking on the phone when I was out of town,” said Davidson. “It just grew.” Even though their romance didn’t last, the Emmy winner happily told Soap City in 2000, “I have a terrific working relationship with Don… [Being exes], it could have gone either way, [but] we’ve actually risen to the occasion.” Now, of course, Diamont plays Bill on Bold & Beautiful.
Roberta Leighton and David Hasselhoff

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A late-1970s “It” couple, these Young & Restless alumni, who played doctors Casey and Snapper, couldn’t pass a magazine rack without seeing their faces on the cover while they were dating (and later engaged). Leighton even discussed with Daytime TV how her sweetheart’s love got her through the dark times. They never exchanged “I dos,” but following Hasselhoff’s split from Catherine Hickland (Lindsay, One Life to Live), he did marry a different Young & Restless actress…
Pamela Bach and David Hasselhoff

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These two Young & Restless alumni were never on the show at the same time. But you may recall that Bach originated the role of Mari Jo in 1994. (Jack’s off-her-rocker girlfriend was played longer by Diana Barton.) The couple wed in 1989, the same year that Baywatch premiered, and divorced 17 years later. “Everybody thought he was the golden star in swimming trunks on the beach with Pamela Anderson,” Bach told the Daily Mail in ’08, “but the drink was taking over his life… I always believed in happy Hollywood endings, but our story doesn’t have one. We were both living a lie, but the biggest tragedy was that David loved the bottle more than me.” Since 2018, The Hoff has been hitched to Hayley Roberts, a native of Wales who is nearly 30 years younger than he is.
Mark Grossman and Sharon Case

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As secrets go, this one wasn’t particularly well-kept. The Young & Restless co-stars, who play on-again/off-again couple Adam and Sharon, appeared so regularly — and so cozily — in one another’s social-media feeds for a while there that it didn’t take an ace detective to figure out that they were an item. But “Shadam” shippers might never have had the real-life romance confirmed for them if it weren’t for the COVID pandemic. “The reason why we finally mentioned it to the studio,” the Emmy winner told the 90210MG podcast in 2021, “is… just so that we wouldn’t have to distance… in case the show wanted to write us in scenes together.”
Julianne Morris and Eddie Cibrian

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The relationship between their Young & Restless characters Amy and Matt could only have been described as toxic. But things were a bit sweeter for the actors themselves in the mid-to-late-1990s. Their real-life romance was even a hot topic on the cover of Soap Opera Update magazine in 1995. That same year, Morris told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that she intended to remain a virgin until she married. “I would always tell the men I was dating after we went out a few times. I thought it was only fair. They almost all reacted the same way. ‘You’re still a virgin?’ they would say. ‘Well, you haven’t dated me.’” They thought if I went out with them a few more times, I would change my beliefs. It never happened.” Morris married actor Kristoffer Polaha in 2003. Cibrian wed his second wife, country superstar LeAnn Rimes, in 2011.
Justin Hartley and Sofia Pernas

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When these marrieds met while playing Adam and Marisa in the mid-2010s, “we didn’t work together that closely, and we didn’t work together that long,” Hartley told Haute Living in 2021. “I knew that she was very kind and very nice. I liked being around her. But I wasn’t available.” In fact, he was wed to second wife Chrishell Stause, who was Bethany on the soap. Following his split from Stause, the This Is Us star reconnected with Pernas. “Timing has a lot to do with that,” he said. “I’m very lucky to not only have found ‘the one,’ but I found her when she was available, and the timing was right.”
Carlos Yeaggy and Melody Thomas Scott

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It wasn’t just the blush that the late Young & Restless makeup artist applied to the actress’ face in the ’80s that made her so radiant — the co-workers were falling for one another. When they learned that they were expecting, the soap gave Nikki one of daytime’s earliest “Who’s the daddy?” storylines. “The pregnancy, and the question of whose it was, became a huge moment in the show and pop culture in general,” Scott writes in her memoir, Always Young & Restless: My Life On and Off America’s #1 Daytime Drama. Once the stork dropped off baby Alexandra, the new mom seized the “opportunity to raise a child in a way that I was not raised,” Scott told People in 2020. Having suffered at the hand of her late grandmother, “that became very important to me.”
Billy Miller and Elizabeth Hendrickson

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Even before Young & Restless paired these two as Billy and Chloe, they’d been castmates on All My Children (as Richie and Maggie). “We were co-stars, we were friends, we were more than friends. We were complicated at times,” she Instagrammed in the wake of the Emmy winner’s tragic passing in 2023 at just 43 years old. “What never changed was my love for you.” In a separate post, Hendrickson admitted, “I’m sad and, yes, mad at myself that I wasn’t being a better friend, checking in more often because I was thinking of you recently… This hole in my heart will never be filled.”
Cindy Fisher and Doug Davidson

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Young & Restless’ late co-creator William J. Bell “was one of those psychic writers,” Davidson suggested to Soap Opera Digest in 2008. The Emmy winner believed that the scribe must have known what he was doing when he hatched a plot for the New Brotherhood Cult to order his and Fisher’s characters, Paul and Rebecca, to procreate. “My on-screen kiss with my future wife was pretty memorable. We were pretty good friends before [that happened]. Then we started dating.” The former co-stars have been married since 1984.
Thad Luckinbill and Amelia Heinle

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Art imitated life for these former Young & Restless co-stars, who married in real life in 2007 — a year before their characters, J.T. and Victoria. Though their on-screen relationship became contentious, Heinle told Soaps.com in 2009, “It’s fun! We don’t really fight at home that often. Maybe one of the reasons for that is because, when we come to work lately, all we get to do is fight!” Heinle and Luckinbill, who has branched out into movie-producing (La La Land, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody), have two children together.
Kym and Jerry Douglas

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Sadly, it wasn’t until years after the 2006 passing of the Young & Restless veteran who’d played John for decades that his real-life missus made her debut on the soap as Traci’s literary agent, Zelda. Kym felt a good deal of pressure, “representing my late husband at his home that he was at for over 35 years,” she told Soap Opera Digest. But she was determined to do right by the legendary actor and, by extension, their son. “John Abbott didn’t really falter in his views, in his love for his family and in his fairness to his fellow man,” Kym said. “I want to tell you, Jerry had his faults and wasn’t perfect, but the way he raised Hunter and the kind of husband he was to me, he truly lived those principles — and I’m not making that up.”
Melissa Claire Egan and Matt Katrosar

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Don’t feel bad if you don’t recognize Egan’s real-life husband as easily as you do Chelsea’s portrayer. He only made a couple of appearances on Young & Restless, mainly so that the show could put someone in his better half’s close proximity during the COVID pandemic. (First he played a kidnapper, then an EMT.) “It was really cute,” Egan told Soaps.com in 2021. “He got the adrenaline rush and was like, ‘You’re under the lights, and it’s so exciting!’ I said, ‘I know — now imagine if you had monologues!’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I couldn’t do that.’” So alas, Katrosar’s brush with fame was not a star-is-born moment. “He’s so not an actor, he’s a businessman,” Egan laughed. “I think he’s retiring before he has to get his [Screen Actors Guild] card and this winds up costing us money.”
Nicky Schillace and Lauren Koslow

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The Days of Our Lives star (who plays Kate) was given a juicy storyline as Young & Restless blackmailer Lindsey in the 1980s. Yet the more interesting twists may have been going on in the makeup room, where she was having her lips glossed and eyes liner’d by her future husband. “I thought he was a little intimidating,” she told Michael Fairman TV in 2013. But by and by, she got used to sitting in Schillace’s chair and even confiding in him. “I would date and come in the next day and ask him for advice.” An “infamous Christmas party” later, the couple entered into an “altared state” in 1987 and went on to have three children together.
Brytni Sarpy and Bryton James

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Almost as quickly as Cupid took aim at Devon and Elena, the matchmaking cherub did the same with their portrayers. It couldn’t have happened at a better time, either. Dating during the COVID pandemic could be stressful. Heck, just living through that period was! “We’re a lot alike in many ways, but he’s one of the most level-headed, fact-based people I know,” Sarpy told Soaps.com in 2020. “He’s not emotionally triggered. So… he doesn’t even have to say anything [to be a calming influence], I can just look at him.”
Edward J. and Melody Thomas Scott

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The leading lady got a whole lot more than the role of a lifetime when she joined Young & Restless as Nikki in 1979. She also got an introduction to her future husband, then-executive producer Edward J. Scott (who is now at Bold & Beautiful). “Sometimes life is about timing, and Edward and I met at a time in our lives where the stars were aligned for us,” she wrote in her memoir, Always Young & Restless: My Life On and Off America’s #1 Daytime Drama. “That’s the best way to describe it!” The actress had walked down the aisle twice before saying “I do” to her better half in 1985, but “in my heart,” she told Soap Opera Digest in 2021, “this is my only marriage.”
Susan Walters and Linden Ashby

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Young & Restless never took advantage of the real-life marrieds’ chemistry to make a scheme team of Diane and Cameron. And Loving, the soap that introduced them in the mid-1980s, couldn’t, as they were playing cousins Lorna and Curtis! “We started dating in October, and we were married within six months of our first date,” Walters recalled for Soap Opera Digest in 2022. “Years later, I said to my mom, ‘You never said anything about the fact that I was marrying this person after knowing him for less than six months and I was only 22. What were you thinking?’” Maybe Mom knew a good thing when she saw it. The couple now has two daughters and has worked together on Melrose Place and Teen Wolf.
Jerry Birn and Patty Weaver

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It wasn’t one of Young & Restless’ hunky leading men that turned the head of the actress who played Danny’s sister Gina from 1982-2005 but one of its handsome writers. She and Birn tied the knot in 1994 and remained married until his passing in ’09. The secret of their success? Never talking about work, Weaver told Soap Opera Digest. Since being widowed, the actress has begun a new career. “One night, I closed my eyes,” she told TV Insider in 2023. “The next morning, I woke up, drove to an art store and picked out a bunch of supplies. I had no idea what I was doing… I had never picked up a paint brush in my life. I can’t explain it. But I think it was a gift given to me. It’s really taken off.”
Mark Grossman and Courtney Hope

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Let’s face it: Who do we spend more time with than our co-workers? Nobody, right? So it makes sense that actors spending day after day together on the set might discover that their connection extends beyond the studio. Such seemed to be the case for Adam and Sally’s portrayers in 2022. Neither actor ever confirmed or denied that they were dating, but “Ally” fans were happy to jump to conclusions after seeing photos from their fun-filled jaunt to Mexico. “I just think very highly of him as an actor,” Hope told Soap Opera Digest in 2023, “and he’s a really wonderful person, too.”
Jeanne Cooper and Beau Kazer

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Though Young & Restless had them playing the mother/son duo of Katherine and Brock, the late castmates once had a relationship that was anything but familial. In a 2012 interview with the New York Post, Cooper admitted that following a devastating divorce, she got involved with her co-star, who was 21 years her junior. “We had dinner one night,” she said, “and then, it went further. He made the first move.” The age difference made the relationship a nonstarter for the Emmy winner. “So he married someone else,” Cooper said. And “his new wife? She was 30 years older than he was!”