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Celebrity Couples With Disturbing Age Gaps

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Hollywood keeps pairing up decades apart, and the tabloids never run out of math to do.

Nicki Swift’s rundown of “Celebrity Couples With Disturbing Age Gaps” pulls together seven marriages and engagements where the calendar became the headline. From Clint Eastwood’s 35-year gap with Dina Ruiz to Lady Gaga’s freshly announced engagement to a man 18 years her senior, the video traces how the entertainment industry keeps producing May-December pairings that draw scrutiny long after the wedding photos run.

• Clint Eastwood, then 66, married 30-year-old Dina Ruiz in March 1996 — a 35-year age gap.
• Doug Hutchison, 51, married 16-year-old Courtney Stodden in May 2011 with parental consent, a union that ended in separation in 2018.
• David Foster, born 1949, got engaged to Katharine McPhee, born 1984, in mid-2018 — a 34-year gap — while Lady Gaga confirmed her engagement to Christian Carino, 18 years older, that October.

The Eastwood Template

Clint Eastwood and Dina Ruiz set an early benchmark for how much daylight the public would tolerate between a leading man and his wife. Eastwood was 66 and Ruiz was 30 when they married in March 1996, a 35-year spread that made theirs one of the widest gaps among any couple the video covers. The marriage drew less tabloid venom than some of the others on the list, mostly because Ruiz was a fully independent adult broadcaster when the relationship became public.

The Stodden Case

No couple in the video generated more backlash than Doug Hutchison and Courtney Stodden. The 51-year-old character actor married Stodden, then 16, in Las Vegas in May 2011 with her parents’ consent — a legal workaround that didn’t stop the 34-year gap and Stodden’s minor status from becoming a national talking point. The marriage limped on for years under constant public criticism before the two separated in 2018.

A 51-year-old man married a 16-year-old with her parents’ blessing — and the backlash never really stopped.

Depp, Bourdain, and Schwimmer

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard met around 2009 on the set of The Rum Diary and married in 2015 with a 23-year gap between them — Depp born in 1963, Heard in 1986. The relationship turned volatile and Heard filed for divorce in 2016. Anthony Bourdain’s marriage to Ottavia Busia carried a 22-year gap (he was born in 1956, she in 1978); the two wed in 2007 and separated in 2016. David Schwimmer’s marriage to British artist Zoe Buckman spanned an 18-year gap, running from their 2010 wedding to their 2017 separation.

The Current Pairings

Two of the relationships in the video were still active as of late 2018. Music producer David Foster, born in 1949, got engaged to singer Katharine McPhee, born in 1984, in mid-2018 — a 34-year gap that put them in the same territory as Eastwood and Ruiz. Lady Gaga, born in 1986, confirmed her engagement to talent agent Christian Carino, born in 1968, in October 2018, an 18-year difference that placed her relationship alongside Schwimmer and Buckman’s on the list.

Foster and McPhee’s engagement was still fresh news when the video went up, which is exactly the kind of pairing that keeps this format evergreen — for more on how the industry treats its unconventional couples, see Inside Megan Fox’s Relationship History or the breakdown of The Truth About Jason Momoa’s Relationship With Zoe Kravitz.