Five Other Hollywood Teen Brides—and Grooms

Macaulay Culkin! Sandra Dee! A Home Improvement kid! Yup, actor Doug Hutchison's 16-year-old wife has company

By Joal Ryan Jun 21, 2011 10:42 PMTags
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It may seem as if nobody but Doug Hutchison and Courtney Alexis Stodden understands their wedded bliss, but more than a few somebodies do.

Here are five Hollywood marriages that have costarred at least one teenaged bride—or groom:

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1. Jerry Lee Lewis and Myra Gale Brown: He was 22, and a twice-divorced rock'n'roller. She was 13, and his cousin. No, their union didn't play well with 1950s audiences. "It totally destroyed his career," the bride would say one day. At least they got a biopic out of the deal, which ended in divorce in 1970: Dennis Quaid's Great Balls of Fire, based on Myra's memoir. 

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2. Taran Noah Smith and Heidi Van Pelt: They met at a raw-food party. He was a 14-year-old Home Improvement son; she was a pushing-30 nutrionist. Three years later, they married, and launched a vegan-cheese product. In 2007, they split, and warred over custody of the aforementioned vegan-cheese product. 

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3. Charlie Chaplin and Oona O'Neill: He was famous, snowy-haired, thrice-divorced and 54; she was glamorous, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, and, at 18, roughly the same age as the groom's eldest child. Their 1943 marriage caused a stir, but it outlasted its critics, as well as the feds who pursued unrelated morals charges against Chaplin in 1944. All told, the union produced eight children, including actress Geraldine Chaplin, and endured until the movie legend's 1977 death.   

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4. Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee: The story goes that when the "Mack the Knife" crooner met the Gidget star on the set of their romantic comedy Come September, he asked, "Will you marry me?" The answer was, eventually, yes. The pair wed in 1960. He was 24; she was, owing to her fuzzy birthday, as young as 16, or as "old" as 18. They divorced in 1967 after "he just woke up one morning and didn't want to be married anymore." (See Kevin Spacey's Beyond the Sea for the more romantic version.)

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5. Macaulay Culkin and Rachel Miner: At the time of their 1998 wedding, the Home Alone kid was just 17, but—hold the outrage!—his daytime-soap bride was only 17, too. Unfortunately, their May-May romance was doomed like so many May-Decembers. They separated in 2000, divorcing two years later.