First, if you are in a grumpy “I hate romance and love and couples!” mood, that is your right, and you should go watch Anjaam and look at yesterday’s “men in wet shirts” post. But if your mood is more “falala, happiness and flowers and my boyfriend/husband is so awesome!”, then this will just serve to increase that feeling. Or, alternatively, if you are in a sort of miserable “there are no happy couples or true love in the world” vibe, this will convince you that is false. Also, I have a clear and declared winner for the Best Couple Award, you will have to convince me out of it.
Once again, starting with dessert.
Shahrukh and Gauri and Yash Chopra
And 20 years later, still handsy
And finally, wedding photo!
(more SRK-Gauri photos available on this post)
Shahrukh isn’t the only Khan with an adorable marriage. Aamir is in there too! He and Kiran, a tiny little perfect couple.
SO SWEET!!!!
Matching glasses!
Early days and bad hair
Head kiss, yes/no?
Definite kiss, even with scratchy beard
Movie star marriages tend to either be totally private, or be with fellow movie stars (which I find less adorable). But in the list of public-and-not-a-famous-spouse, the newest entry is Shahid and Mira. Who are so old-fashioned it was even arranged!
Early pre-baby days
Protective pregnancy days
New parent joy
And, WEDDING!
How about a gender swap! A female movie star this time who married completely outside of the industry, Madhuri and happy happy lucky lucky Dr. Nene.
Cuteness!
CUTENESS!
Babies
Hanging with Shahrukh
And, WEDDING. And the first appearance of the classic “hey look, I’m married to Madhuri Dixit and am the happiest man in the world” smile.
Let’s go a bit old-school. Amitabh and Jaya.
First film together
Courtship
Early days of marriage
More early days
Babies!
Slightly bigger babies
Grandbabies
And today
And, WEDDING
Also wedding (he loves her so much!)
And finally, Twinkle and Akshay, my new couple crush.
There is nothing sexier than sharing a sense of humor!
They are always making each other laugh! Every photo!
EVERY PHOTO!
EVERY ONE!!!
Or else, Twinkle is smiling and Akshay looks over come with lust.
Sometimes both of them have a bit of a “should we just make out now?” look.
Or sometimes he just seems incredibly protective. Like, during pregnancy
Or even during the wedding
Oh, and he’s cool with her gay best friend.
You see????? You see why they are THE BEST couple?
Although, you can also fee free to disagree with me. Out of all of these couples, or ones I didn’t include, who is your favorite?
dontcallitbollywood 
You evidently don’t consider fidelity a requirement for Valentine’s Day couples. Except for Madhuri – Dr. Nene (what the heck is his name? It’s amazing everyone refers to him only as “Dr. Nene” after all these years), every other one of these couples have been plagued by strong rumors of infidelity. (And in Aamir’s case, there are not only rumors, but established fact in a couple of cases). I’d give SRK-Gauri second place, simply because I don’t know how much to credit the rumors in his case.
BTW, that pic of Madhuri and her husband at their wedding reception in Mumbai is one I’d caption, “Oh, so this is what being a movie star means”, since he supposedly had never followed Hindi movies, and had never heard of Madhuri (as a star, or even actress) when they had their arranged marriage meet ups in the U.S. Hey, so there’s another “old-fashioned” arranged marriage for you.
How could you possibly miss Genelia – Riteish among cute and in-love couples? Now that I think of them, I might even give them first place over Madhuri & hubby.
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Oh my gosh, you are right about Genelia and Ritiesh! And I totally did think of them, and then forgot them and had this vague “who was it I was going to add? I can’t remember” feeling. I may have to update the post, depending on how cute are the photos I can find of them.
I went with couples who seem really great together from the evidence of my own eyes, because digging through the rumor mill is just an impossible task. And besides, we also don’t know what constitutes “infidelity” for their individual marriages. For instance, Twinkle seems like someone who might give her husband a “hall pass” while he is on location. Or might not. But we really can’t know, and they sure seem happy to be together in all photos, and from what they say in interviews. Amitabh and Jaya, notice I skipped the 80s era 🙂 If there was an affair, makes it even more impressive that they came back and the marriage survived until now.
For Aamir, I thought it went in the for-sure level that he cheated on his first wife with the British journalist, that affair ended and so did the first marriage, and then he got together with Kiran? So at least the Kiran marriage is clean of confirmed infidelity, it’s only rumors.
On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 2:23 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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So you don’t know Dr. Nene’s name, either? Bummer.
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Srinivas! But only because I was just looking for all those photos.
What I find really funny is that he is so familiar to me. There have been a few events where Madhuri did her hair differently or something and I couldn’t recognize her, but I could recognize him, “who is that woman standing next to Dr. Nene? Oh, it must be Madhuri if Dr. Nene brought her.”
On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 2:36 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Woops, Shriram.
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Right! I remember now having read it several times before, but I guess it slipped my mind.Thank you for digging it out again.
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Do you think any of the women have affairs as well? If their men are busy with other women that leaves a nice opening in the schedule, right?
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Absolutely! When Hrithik and Suzanne’s divorce was announced, there was a strong rumor that she was having an affair with Arjun Rampal. Which I find hilarious in a sort of “evil fairy twisted riddle” way. Like, “Hrithik, Suzanne will be faithful to you so long as she meets no man as handsome as you”. Or else that Suzanne has really really specific taste, and her type is “handsomest man on earth” and she will accept no substitutes, but she will acknowledge when there are two winners.
More seriously, I’ve heard rumors that the more sort of casual cool modern filmi crowd, the Suzanne and Hrithik and Dips and Ranveer and Anushka and Virat kind of couples, are like any other wealthy international group and some of them have open marriages or “arrangements” or secret weekends away, and some of them don’t. But it’s so hard because of course the Indian public culture in general still has this strict “an affair is an affair is an affair” attitude, so you can’t really parse out the rumors between what is heartbreaking and tragic and cheating, and what is just what that couple does, and what is just a rumor and no more.
Oh, there is at least one woman who DEFINITELY is having an “affair”, Twinkle’s mother Dimple. She never officially divorced her husband, and Sunny Deol has never divorced his wife, but he and Dimple have been a committed couple for like 30 years now, and Dimple wasn’t living with her husband for years before she met Sunny, and Sunny and his wife seem to have a very proper and uninterested marriage in which they spend almost no time together. At which point I don’t know if you can call it an “affair” any more, or more just like common-law marriage and common-law divorces? I was actually tempted to include Sunny and Dimple here, because they are so cute together, but they aren’t really really married, so I didn’t.
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Suzanne has really really specific taste, and her type is “handsomest man on earth” and she will accept no substitutes, but she will acknowledge when there are two winners.
lololololol
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I like all the couples except Shahid and Mira.
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Really? What’s wrong with Shahid and Mira? (for you)
On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 4:07 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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They look nice, have a cute baby, I hope they are happy together, but I just don’t like them as a couple for many reasons. I have had issues with Shahid for some time, then he annunced this arranged marriage with much younger girl and later this terrible KwK happened (I know you didn’t like it either). There is only one couple I dislike more – Kareena and Saif.
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All makes sense to me! Just curious if it was the same reasons I have for being dubious or other ones I hadn’t thought of.
On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 4:36 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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KwK ??
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Koffee With Karan. Their episode was just odd. Way way too much PDA.
On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 9:24 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Koffee with Karan – of course. I didn’t see that episode and haven’t got much chance of seeing it now as Hotstar isn’t available here any more – until they make an app for us…
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It was very odd!!! They felt like teenagers, real handsy and giggly, and the way they described their relationship was kind of disturbing, acknowledging that they were still really strangers when they got married, they didn’t begin to get close until she was pregnant and he had to take care of her, she had no idea her parents were considering this match and was ambushed by the first meeting, all just very odd. They were clearly happy together and all that, but it wasn’t a relationship I would want.
On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 1:25 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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My favorite in this list is Akshay and Twinkle. It’s so nice to see Akshay supporting a very strong independent woman.
My only sadness is WHERE IS THE SOUTH!!!?! *sigh.
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I was going to do Prabhas and Anushka, but that’s just wish-fullfilment not confirmed, and I don’t know any of the other southerners well enough!
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Ah! Noted. I have lost all faith on that ship.
Surya-Jo
Chai-Sam
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I think my fave is Akshay and Twinkle as well. I’m still in stitches about when she referred to him (on Koffee with Karan) as six foot of chocolate ice-cream…
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The only cute couple I can think of from the south is Naga Chaitanya and Samantha. And probably Allu Arjun and his wife (Sneha, I think) who supposedly were sweethearts for a few years before they got married. And your favorite Nagarjuna and Amala, who will be like Aamir and Kiran Rao, in that she is his second wife, but he supposedly divorced his first wife because he fell in love with Amala.
In terms of long standing commitment and being a support, probably both Rajnikanth and his wife, and Vikram and his wife will fit. Sorry, I don’t know about the personal lives of Malayalam stars, except when something blows up, so doesn’t fit the theme. In general, the personal lives of stars don’t get bruited about in the South industries the way they do in Hindi.
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Unfortunately, Malayalam Movies still need those Chai Sam unions!! Most of the youngsters are marrying peeps outside the industry. Jayaram and Parvathy. Dileep and Manju Warrier WAS an evergreen couple, but, sadly broke apart!
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Madhuri & Sriram Nene seem to have a rock solid marriage that fits into my Indian middle class concept of marriage. He left his life in US & moved to India to support her career which is just great.
Ritesh -Genelia. They dated for 8 years, working through cultural, family differences (he the Marathi Manoos from a political family & she from a normal Goan Christian family)mostly working away from each other(she more in south while he was in Hindi/Marathi). The relationship must be really strong.
South couples-
Chai-Sam gives me the Abhi-Ash vibe.
Surya -Jyothika-sorta like Ritesh Genelia-working through parental opposition(from his family), cultural differences etc for years before marrying. He is now supporting her reentry to movies in a big way. In fact Suriya’s biggest draw among women is his devoted husband/family-man image.
Fahad-Nazriya- like Shahid-Mira in age difference(she was 19, he was 30)& arranged marriage. Only unlike Mira, Nazriya was very very popular in Malayalam & Tamil. So there was all kinds of judgments on marrying early, marrying younger girls, heroines quitting after marriage(though she never said she’s quitting)etc. 3 years later, they seem very happy & she has started acting again-with Prithviraj.
Mammootty-Sulfath-Much like Rajnikant,Mammooty has never ever ever been linked with anyone. He’s very respectful of his wife & credits her entirely for how DQ has turned out.
Mani Ratnam & Suhasini-I have a theory that the romance in all his movies are so great because he has an amazing relationship with his wife.
South couples are mostly non controversial unless it is Kamal Hassan, Nag or Dileep.
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I have that same Mani Ratnam theory! his love stories aren’t about falling in love at first sight and the passion and the magic, it’s about growing together and finding that magic every day. Which seems like something that only comes from experiencing your own rock solid marriage.
On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 2:56 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I also thought about Ritesh and Genelia…Ritesh is a very close friend to ShahRukh and Gauri & him got involved in the evolving of the relation…I think thea are a really lovable couple.
I clearly would opt for ShahRukh-Gauri and Madhuri-Sriram Madhav Nene here because they have a deep grounded respect for each other and as for the first mentioned, Gauri still feels loved by ShahRukh 🙂 (I have no idea how much ShahRukh feels loved by Gauri…there may be a striking ‘imbalance’ , although Gauri is the Zodiac sign of balance)…
I believe that all the other couples you showed put up a (big) front (at least in current times).
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Gotta go with Madhuri-Dr. Nene as the top couple, then SRK-Gauri, Akshay-Twinkle, and Amitabh-Jaya tied for second. I can’t judge anyone else’s marriage, and I sincerely hope all of them have not had too many rough spots, and if so, they are happily out the other side of them. Certainly SRK and Gauri’s body language and expressions in public have been more lovey dovey in the last year than in the 10 years prior to that.
The picture of Shah Rukh and Gauri on the couch together defines “couple goals” for me. They fit together so well, so calmly and comfortably, both of them focusing on whomever they are listening to. Nice.
I wish all the other couples well too, I just don’t find them as compelling to look at or think about. 🙂
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Bigger picture, I feel like there is this sense that if a marriage isn’t happy and perfect all the time, it is a “failure”. Whereas what I see is that marriages have ebbs and flows like any other relationship. Aamitabh and Jaya were adorable in their early years, and seem really sweet now. Maybe they had a rough patch in the middle there, but most marriages go through rough patches, the point is if you come out the other side of it.
I don’t know, I was putting this together as the news of Jennifer Aniston’s divorce broke and it made me think about marriages that are perfect and happy and the fairy tale, and only last a few years, versus ones that have hard times and compromise and end up lasting for decades. Unrelated to anything else, Jennifer’s divorce also made me think “12 million dollars for a FOUR BEDROOM HOUSE????? that’s like 3 million a room! That’s INSANE!!!!”
On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 2:40 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Surya – Jyothika are wonderful.
And I have a soft spot for Tovino and his wife. They have been together since they were 15. She was the one who encouraged him to be an actor. But what I love the most is that she looks like a normal woman! I was used that (western) celebrities only marry other famous people or those “I’m too pretty for work, so I’ll say I’m a model and go to parties to marry a rich guy” girls who look all the same for me. Seeing Tovino and his wife wedding was like watching one of those “shy librarian girl marries Prince Charming” but in real life.
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Just looked up Tovino’s wedding, and oh my gosh you are right!
On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 4:04 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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There even is their wedding video on youtube.
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