Bo Derek Opens Up About Her 18-Year Romance with John Corbett — and Why They Have No Plans to Marry

Though they have been together for nearly 20 years, Bo Derek and John Corbett have no plans to marry any time soon.

“I think when you’re beginning a young family and you’re going to have children and set up this new family tree branch, it’s obviously a wonderful commitment and it’s meaningful,” the 10 actress said in a recent interview with Fox News. “But for us in our lives, it hasn’t been yet.”

Derek, 63, and Corbett, 59, first began dating in 2002. “It was just an attraction, a comfort,” she said of their meeting.

“He makes me laugh all the time. He’s full of life, full of joy. I became attracted to him and I still am. We take things day by day and I think we are still there,” she added of the former Sex and the City star. “We’re starting to get a little more settled.”

Corbett has echoed Derek’s views on marriage in the past, telling the Huffington Post in 2016 that the secret to a successful relationship is not getting married at all.

“Don’t get married,” he said. “I have a lot of friends that get divorces. It becomes this whole thing. I think the secret is just enjoy being together.”

Derek also opened up to Fox News about losing her husband, John Derek, in 1998 to congestive heart failure after the couple had been married for 22 years. Derek said she “didn’t expect to end up with anyone again.”

“I’ve always been a fairly optimistic person, but it was a huge change, an enormous loss,” she recalled. “The air just gets sucked out of the room when you lose your partner. So I wallowed in that for a while.”

“I didn’t expect to end up with anyone again,” Derek continued. “Some women want to pair up again right away. I didn’t. I remember consciously fashioning myself after some girlfriends that I have [who] are single and led very full, fantastic lives with friends and family and projects that they do. And that gave them happiness.”