How Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard Became the Saving Grace of Celebrity Couples

Author:
Jessica Sager
Jul 16, 2020

Kristen Belland Dax Shepardhave been relationship goals pretty much since they first started dating—largely because they're open about the fact that their relationship is far from perfect. The pair have been open about their frequent arguments, over everything from laundry to vasectomies, as well as their use of therapy to create a healthy, happy life for themselves and their daughters. Here's everything you need to know about this adorable and occasionally oversharing couple.

2007: Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard meet through mutual friends

Bell admitted that when she and Shepard first met at a dinner party with mutual friends, she not only didn't feel any sparks, she also had no idea who he was. Bell and Shepard were each freshly out of their own longterm relationships with other people, and it didn't appear that a rebound would happen for them.

"The only thing I remember is that he talked so much," Bell recalled on TODAYin 2019. "I was like, 'This guy can taaaalk!" She added that Shepard recalled her "telling a really intense story about a deal [she] got at Target."

Two weeks later, the Detroit natives met at a Red Wings hockey game and flirted. Shepard got Bell's number from a mutual friend and texted her apologizing for violating her privacy, which gave her "butterflies." Cute!

For his part, Shepard also has his own first impression of Bell and her crew. "When I met her and her friends, I was suspicious of their unbridled happiness," the Armchair Expert podcast host told Good Housekeepingin 2015. "I thought, 'Something stinks here; they're in a cult.' But slowly I began to see her positive way of looking at the world. She gives people the benefit of the doubt."

2007: They have frequent, "incredibly toxic" fights

Bell says that three months into their relationship—when couples are typically still in the honeymoon phase—cracks started to show, and she admits that they were largely her fault. (Forgetting Sarah Marshallmuch?)

"When we first met, we fell madly in love and I love the dramatic exit. There is nothing I crave more," she confessed to Harry Connick Jr. in 2017. "We'd get in a fight because we'd fight a lot, and 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."

She added that Shepard gave her an ultimatum: "Three months into our relationship he was like: 'You can't leave anymore during fights. I'm not going to do that.'" He added that he had "too much respect for [himself]" to tolerate her behavior, and instead they worked on her fighting style.

Circa 2007: Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard break up briefly

In 2017, Bell revealed that she and Shepard broke up briefly in 2007 before getting serious. "We were dating for about three months, and I already knew that I was in love with him and he was hesitant because he knew he was still dating other people," Bell told PopSugar. "He sat me down and said, 'I can't have this right now. I think you're wonderful, but I am still dating other people.' And then I like, liquified and fell to the ground, but I felt incredibly respected that he had the balls to tell me we weren't in the same place."

Shepard came to his senses in less than one week, Bell recalled.

"He called me and he was like, 'I don't know what I was thinking. I was dating someone else but they're just not as interesting as you, and I don't know what I'm doing,' and he came back," she said. "But I still always remind him of when he broke up with me."

January 2008: Bell and Shepard go public

Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard go public with their romance in January 2008, vacationing together in Florida, attending parties and events together and being generally super cute in public.

December 2009: Dax Shepard pops the question to Kristen Bell

Though they didn't announce the news until the Grammys red carpet in February 2010, Bell and Shepard got engaged over the holidays in 2009, her rep confirmed to PEOPLE.

Shepard credited pal Jason Batemanfor his engagement to Bell. The couple costarred in When In Rome, and after filming on location in Italy, Shepard put a ring on it. "Jason was first to go, 'Stop f**king around and marry Kristen,'" Shepard recalled to PEOPLEin 2015. Shepard joked that Bateman then "immediately transitioned" to urging Shepard to get Bell pregnant.

2012: Kristen Bell urges Dax Shepard to have them "go out together" while filming Hit & Run

Shepard told Playboy that while shooting Hit & Run in 2012, he did some seriously risky stunts—and that Bell wouldn't let him do them alone. "Naturally the producer had booked a stunt double, but Kristen said to me, 'No. If you're driving through a barn and jumping other cars, I need to be in there with you. We're going to go out together.'"

He also revealed the reasons why they fought so often early in their relationship. "Kristen's a good girl. She grew up very Christian, went straight to college, did great in school and started work immediately. She's charitable and philanthropic and rescues dogs. So when we met, our backgrounds were opposites," he explained. "All the things I'd done were terrifying to her, and she had a hard time believing I would ever be able to stay married and monogamous and a father and all those things. For the first year and a half we were together that was what we battled over almost weekly."

Those "terrifying" things included substance abuse and philandering, but Shepard has been sober for nearly 16 years now. "Since I got sober, have honestly been about trying to peel back each of those habits," he said, "to get back to the 12-year-old kid inside who was tremendously excited about life."

March 2013: Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard welcome their first child, Lincoln Bell Shepard

The couple became parents to daughter Lincoln Bell Shepard in March 2013. "Lincoln Bell Shepard is here," Shepard tweeted. "She has mom's beauty and dad's obsession with breasts. Hooray!!!" Bell quipped, "My new roommate poops her pants and doesn’t pay rent…basically Dax pre-sobriety. Welcome baby Lincoln."

https://twitter.com/daxshepard/status/317359139774939136
https://twitter.com/KristenBell/status/317372125721817088

June 2013: Kristen Bell proposes to Dax Shepard

Though the couple were already officially engaged, Bell and Shepard were waiting for same-sex marriage to be legal in California before they'd get married. When the Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8 were overturned in June 2013, Bell popped the question to Shepard on Twitter.

October 2013: Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell get married in the "world's worst wedding"

Shepard and Bell officially married Oct. 17, 2013 at a courthouse with just the happy couple in attendance. "It was just Kristen and I at this lonely courthouse so they brought us this cake afterwards," Shepard recalled on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The cake provided read "The World's Worst Wedding, which didn't bother the lovebirds one bit. Shepard chuckled, "How many people can say they threw 'The World's Worst Wedding?'"

Shepard said it was Jimmy Kimmel and Molly McNearney's wedding that made him want to keep his own nuptials with Bell small.

"There were helicopters overhead. It felt like an episode of M*A*S*H! Not that I was counting your money, but I was counting your money at this thing," he joked. "It was flying out the windows. They were setting it on fire at this place! So we went to the Beverly Hills Courthouse, and all in, with fuel to get there, $142 out the door."

For her part, Bell told CBS Sunday Morning, "We got married in a tiny little room in the Beverly Hills Courthouse, and it was still one of the best days of my life."

Later, Shepard revealed he got a tattoo in Bell's honor on his ring finger, cracking on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, "I don't like wearing jewelry, but I felt obliged to warn all the men that I'm taken."

January 2014: Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard campaign against paparazzi images of children

Bell and Shepard took part in a highly publicized campaign boycotting unauthorized paparazzi photos of celebrity children. They were joined by fellow stars including Jennifer Garner, Scarlett Johansson, Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck, Halle Berry, Minnie Driver, Katie Holmes, Amy Adams, Michelle Williams and Jennifer Aniston.