Hollywood star Julia Roberts celebrated 22 years of marriage to Danny Moder on July 4 2024 with an intimate photo posted to Instagram.
The image showed her passionately kissing her husband with wild abandon, her arms snaked around his neck.
“TWENTY TWO YEARS,” the star captioned her post simply.
But, the couple’s union has not been without its ups and downs over the years.
Here, we take a look back at the couple’s relationship over the years, and how it played out.
Inside Julia Roberts and Danny Moder’s wedding
In 2002, guests turning up to a July 4 bash at a 16-hectare ranch owned by Julia Roberts near Taos, New Mexico were in for a surprise.
“Come celebrate our Independence Day on the green grass under the stars with the dogs and horses,” read their invitations sent to family and close friends, including George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
They were also asked to wear linen or “sweet summer hats” in line with the theme, “Midsummer Night’s Dream-ish meets Great Gatsby-like combined with Wild West Bohemian”.
Shortly after midnight, under a large white tent, Roberts exchanged vows with cameraman Daniel Moder in a top-secret wedding ceremony.
Julia Roberts and Danny Moder’s relationship
In the two decades since their marriage, the low-key couple has still managed to keep much of their relationship under wraps.
However, as they celebrated 20th wedding anniversary, Roberts spilled her advice for lasting love.
“Two bathroom sinks,” she jokingly advised on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Podcast. “And lots of kissing.”
The couple, who share 17-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, and son Henry, 15, spend most of their life away from the public eye, dividing their time between properties in New York City, San Francisco, Malibu, Taos and Hawaii.
What has Julia Roberts said about her marriage to Danny Moder?
Roberts, who at one time was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, says her husband has played a significant role in shaping how her life looks now.
“I think that first kind of real … ‘seismic shift’ was meeting Danny,” she told Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Goop Podcast in 2018.
“Getting married to Danny. That was the first, like, my life will never be the same in the most incredible, indescribable way.”
Who has Julia Roberts had relationships with
Before Moder, Roberts dated actors Liam Neeson and Dylan McDermott in the late 1980s.
In 1991, she came close to marrying her Flatliners co-star, Kiefer Sutherland, before calling it off three days before their planned nuptials in front of 150 guests on a Twentieth Century Fox sound stage.
“I think it took a lot of courage, in amongst all of that other stuff, to be able to say, ‘I can’t do this,’” Sutherland said in 2016, batting away Runaway Bride parallels.
She eventually made it down the aisle with country singer Lyle Lovett in 1993 – after three weeks of dating! – but they split within two years.
Roberts had been dating actor Benjamin Bratt for four years when she first met Moder on the set of The Mexican in early 2000.
Moder was married to makeup artist Vera Steimberg.
Roberts confirmed her split from Bratt in June 2001 and later claimed that she wasn’t to blame for Moder’s divorce.
“He sorted his whole thing out, separate and apart from me,” she said in 2003. “And I sorted my life out, separate and apart from him. I think that’s the only reason we were able to ultimately fall in love with each other and be together.”
Weathering scandal at the start of their relationship has dictated the pair’s efforts to keep their love low-key.
Julia Roberts on divorce rumours
Divorce rumours, Roberts told Harper’s Bazaar in 2018, remain a nuisance.
“Sometimes we are in the grocery store and I won’t even know something is out, but we’ll see a tabloid and we’ll all be standing there like, ‘Oh, that’s uncomfortable,’” she said.
“It can still hurt my feelings, because I’m so proud of my marriage.”
A source told Us Weekly “there have been highs and lows” over the years, particularly over long separations that arise when Roberts is working away from home.
Still, at the Cannes Film Festival in May, she clarified where her priorities lie while presenting an award.
“This is about cinema,” she said. “Which is the love of my life second to my husband.”
“He truly, to this day, to this minute, is just my favourite human,” she told Goop of Moder. “Really, we’re so lucky in that way. We just really, really like each other and we just enjoy each other’s company.”
