The Tamesis
Love is a wonderful thing, especially when you look at it from the outside. In this column, we look at the celebrity couples who give us hope for our own romantic futures, while we try to make sense of our own from their well-documented relationships.
While I took a lot of life advice from Barbra Streisand’s 2023 memoir, there may be more to learn from the famed EGOT winner’s nearly three-year marriage to actor James Brolin. I mean…that’s a long time for two celebrities!
Streisand (who turns 84 today!) and Brolin met in 1996 at a dinner party hosted by Streisand’s friend Christine Peters, who was eager to set them up. “I didn’t know much about him, so she was quick to fill me in. He had played young motorcyclist Dr. Steven Kelly in the TV series that made him famous, Marcus Welby, MD“But I never saw it,” Streisand recalled in her book. However, his other role was as Peter McDermott in the soap opera hotel— conjured up a very specific image in her mind: “a handsome man with dark, thick, curly hair and a neatly trimmed beard.” So when she saw Brolin in person — and the fact that he was “clean-shaven and with a buzzcut” — she was confused, which led to a truly iconic opening line. As the two sat down to eat, Streisand, in her unique, blunt, native New York style, put her hand on Brolin’s head and asked, “Who messed up your hair?” Needless to say, he was smitten.
Later that year, the couple made their red carpet debut before getting married in a Los Angeles backyard in 1998. Now, decades later, Brolin’s son Josh Brolin tells us they’ve become doting grandparents people 2018: “My wife bought Barbara a bracelet that said ‘Grandma’ on it, and she started crying. She really loved it, and I loved that she loved it. I mean, it was like a very typical Jewish grandmother, she was soaked by the event. It was awesome.” Oh! We love you, Boobie Barbara!
Is it even sweeter? Streisand’s relationship with Brolin not only inspired her 1999 album love like usand – somewhat improbably – Aerosmith’s song “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” As songwriter Diane Warren explained in 2016: “I was told that there was an interview with Barbra Streisand and her husband, and he said he didn’t like to sleep, you know, because he missed her. And I was like, ‘Wow, if I could figure that out, that would be a really cool idea for a song.'”
Well, consider that she did, and now Streisand and Brolin have a permanent place in rock history—not to mention in the Hollywood canon of true love.
