Rita Wilson is sharing the marriage advice her mom gave that didn’t sit right with her.
During a recent appearance on Michelle Obama’s podcast, “In My Opinion,” the 69-year-old actress spoke about the outdated marriage advice her mom gave her before she met and married Tom Hanks.
“I was engaged before I got engaged to my husband. If I had married that person, I would have been divorced within a year,” she said. “I thought that was what you were supposed to do at a certain age. I actually thought, because I had never really fallen in love with anyone, that I would be OK.”
While engaged to that man, Wilson said she asked her mom for advice, telling her, “I don’t know though. Should I marry him? I’m not really in love with him,” and getting a surprising response in return.
“She said, ‘Don’t worry, you grow to love him.’ I was like, ‘Mom, that’s not my generation,'” she said. “Her generation was like, ‘Is he a good man? Will he provide?’ There wasn’t any of this, ‘I have to be madly in love.’ My parents were married for 59 years, so whatever they figured out, they figured out. But I still wanted to hold out for that falling in love thing.”
Ultimately, Wilson did not go through with marrying the first man, knowing “marriage would not have sustained that relationship,” and found love with Hanks after they reunited on set of “Volunteers” in 1984, tying the knot in 1988.
The “Now and Then” actress told Obama and her co-host and brother, Craig Robinson, when she “finally met Tom and fell in love with” Hanks, she had the feeling that “this is very, very different than what I had before.”
When it comes to being a mom, Wilson said she wasn’t sure she wanted to have children, but knew she “didn’t wanna have children with the wrong people or person.”
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“Tom had two children,” she said. “I already saw that he could be a good dad. So, I was like, ‘OK, good, that’s helpful. A little example here.'”
Hanks was already a father to Colin and Elizabeth, who he shares with his ex-wife, Samantha Lewes, and later welcomed sons Chet and Truman with Wilson.
Of his children, Colin and Chet have followed in Hanks and Wilson’s footsteps, with Elizabeth pursuing a career as an author and journalist under the pen name E.A. Hanks and Truman focusing on other aspects of filmmaking.
Most recently, Chet has found success starring in “Running Point” alongside Kate Hudson, and Colin has appeared in a number of successful projects, including “Life In Pieces,” “Fargo,” “American Crime Story” and others.
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“I’ve always asked him for advice when it comes to acting, and he’s always given me really great advice,” Chet told Page Six in September 2024.
“He just said, ‘If you just know your lines, and you show up on time, and you’re nice to everybody, that gets you a long way.'”
