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Couples Who Marry Twice

Marie Osmond just remarried her first ex-husband 25 years after they split—in the same dress! From Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to Michelle Griffith and Don Johnson, see famous couples who wed, divorced, and walked down the aisle again.

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Bob V. Noble
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Longtime singing sensation Marie Osmond remarried her first ex-husband Stephen Craig in Las Vegas this week, more than 25 years after things went south with their first marriage. The pair initially walked down the aisle in 1982 and had a child together. But things turned sour after a few years and they split up in 1985, with Osmond citing “ mental cruelty” in the divorce papers, TMZ reported. The star of the variety show Donnie & Marie and doll designer went on to marry music producer Brian Blosil from 1986 to 2007, but she and Craig reportedly stayed friends over the years. Craig, a former basketball player, was allegedly very supportive of Osmond when her son committed suicide in February 2010. “I am so happy and look forward to sharing my life with Stephen, who is an amazing man as well as a great father to my children," Osmond told People magazine. In a romantic throwback to her first wedding, the singer wore the same dress for her second round of nuptials to Craig.

Mike V.
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Late Hollywood luminaries and Cleopatra co-stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were known for their passionate, tempestuous relationship, marked by declarations of undying love followed by roaring, alcohol-infused fights. So it’s no surprise they were on-again, off-again throughout most of their relationship. They married for the first time in 1964 and divorced in 1974. Then, a year later, they tied the knot again, only to get divorced for a second time in 1976. But Taylor and Burton couldn’t live without each other. Theirs was the roller coaster romance of the century. “She is a wildly exciting love-mistress, she is shy and witty, she is nobody’s fool, she is a brilliant actress, she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography,” Burton wrote in his diary via the New York Post. “And I’ll love her till I die.” Indeed, they remained devoted to each other after their divorce until Burton’s death in 1984. Before Taylor’s death this year, Burton’s niece told The Daily Mail that they would have probably wed again. “She still says that had he lived they'd be back together once again—that it would have been third time lucky. They were mad about each other. They were soul mates. It was a great love story.”

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Detroit rapper Eminem and his former high school sweetheart Kim Scott have had a highly publicized love-hate relationship over the years. The rapper even famously ripped into his wife in a rather disturbing song, “Kim,” on his hit 2000 album The Marshall Mathers LP. The couple had daughter Hailie Jade together in 1995 and then married in 1999. They divorced two years later and were estranged for years thereafter. But in 2006, they reconciled and remarried. Their second marriage, however, lasted only three months before they split again and re-divorced. In a 2007 episode of ABC’s 20/20, Scott told her side of the story: “Money is great, but it doesn't make your husband stay at home with you. Or sleep in the same bed with you. Him being on the road and on tour—that was like the big one. I mean, constant infidelities, all the time." But if the violent lyrics in Eminem’s notorious song are to be believed, the cheating went both ways.  

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Miracle on 34th Street child star Natalie Wood first saw Hollywood heartthrob Robert Wagner when she was 10 and he was 18 as they passed each other in the hallway at Fox Studios where they were both filming. “Natalie told her mother she would marry me. She did—twice,” Wagner told The Daily Mail. They married in 1957, when Wood was a nubile 19. Wagner said his bride looked “beyond beautiful” on the occasion, “like a portrait by Velázquez, except Velázquez never had a subject as beautiful as her.” But jealousy and disagreements tore the couple apart and they divorced in 1962. A decade later, they reconciled and remarried, having both married and divorced other spouses in the years between. “Natalie would give me notes,” Wagner wrote in The Daily Mail. “At Easter 1975, she wrote: 'Dearest, here's to smooth sailing for us from now on!'” But that last statement would be fraught with irony, when Wood drowned in an accident off the couple’s boat in 1981.

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As daughter of famed actress Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith was an early bloomer. At just 14, she set her eyes on 22-year-old actor Don Johnson, whom she met on the set of her mother’s film The Harrad Experiment. Griffith went on to date Ryan O’Neal, with whom she allegedly attended opium-fueled Hollywood orgies at the ripe age of 17, as O’Neal’s daughter Tatum wrote in her memoir. After Griffith split from O’Neal and she turned 19, she wed Johnson in 1976 in Las Vegas, despite their 12-year age difference. But the couple split up two years after marrying. Griffith went on to marry Steven Bauer and have a son before checking into rehab in 1988. During that time, Johnson too had a serious relationship and a child with Patti D’ Arbanville. Then in 1989, after they had both grown up a bit, Griffith and Johnson married again. Although the couple had a child together, their second go was not much better than the first, and they officially called it quits in 1994.

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In 1961, news anchor Larry King married his third wife: Playboy bunny Alene Akins. King and the Playmate had a son, Andy, in 1962, but the marriage lasted only one year. King went on to marry Mickey Sutphin, but they were divorced in 1966. He then remarried Akins and the two had another child, daughter Chaia. But King and Akins still couldn’t fix their broken relationship—they finally called it quits again in 1972. As of 2011, King has been married eight times. "I think in my life, I have loved three people—married all three,” the former CNN host told The Early Show of his many unions. “The other marriages I wasn't in love. It was the thing to do. I used to say, 'What if your wife called urgent on one line, on the other CNN called urgent… which would you pick up?'... I used to say CNN. Now it would be the wife."

Everett Collection
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M*A*S*H star Elliott Gould was married to Barbra Streisand from 1963 to 1971 and that marriage produced one child. “Marriage should be a beginning, but sometimes it's an end,” Gould told People magazine in 1974. “I learned that I had no ends. I just haven't had the good fortune to meet my soulmate yet." Two years after divorcing Streisand, Gould married Jennifer Bogart, after the couple had already had two children. But they divorced in 1976 and Gould then entered into a serious relationship with Jennifer O’Neill. Things didn’t work out with O’Neill either and following their breakup, Gould and Bogart remarried. Unfortunately, the second marriage lasted less than a year and he hasn’t been married since. It seems that Gould still hasn’t gotten lucky in the soulmate department.

Ron Galella
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Big-screen ingénue Lana Turner married Steve Crane in 1942, but their marriage was annulled once Turner realized that Crane had never finalized his divorce from his previous marriage. Turner and Crane separated and got everything in order before remarrying in 1943. But their second marriage only lasted a year. They had one child, Cheryl, who later caused something of a scandal, when as a teenager, she reportedly killed her mother’s violent boyfriend. Turner had five additional husbands after their split and Crane married thrice more. “My goal was to have one husband and seven children, but it turned out to be the other way around,” Turner famously said.

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Late comedian Richard Pryor was married seven times in his life and two of those marriages were to Flynn Belaine. He married her once in 1986 and once in 1990 with both marriages lasting less than a year. Pryor and Belaine had two children together and even after their second divorce in 1991, Belaine continued to hang around Pryor until his ex-wife Jennifer Lee returned in 1994. Lee claimed Belaine contributed to the “classic chaos” in Pryor’s life and continued to be a drain on his assets even after their divorce. But in 1990, Pryor told Barbara Walters via Jet magazine, “She never went to the press with a story like most of the people in my life have done.”

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Just like Flynn Belaine, one marriage to Richard Pryor wasn’t enough for Jennifer Lee. She and Pryor were married twice, as well: The first time was from 1981 to 1982, and then again from 2001 until 2005. During their first marriage, both abused drugs, she accused him of abuse, and according to Lee, his nickname for her was “white honky bitch.” Later, Lee would describe Pryor as “an angel and a demon.”  She said, “I came back into his life in ’94, never really having left, and there was a lot of struggle. Eventually, I saw him have an acceptance and a peace.” The two walked down the aisle again in 2001 and remained married until his death in 2005.

Bob V. Noble