Catching Up with Wil and Anne Wheaton

Cosmopolitan recently sat down with Wil and Anne Wheaton to talk about what it's like to marry a celebrity. The couple, who have been together for 20 years, had this to say:

How did you two meet?

Wil: "It was Dec. 31, 1995, and our friend Stephanie was having a New Year's Eve party that neither one of us wanted to go to. She wasn't trying to set us up. It just kind of happened that we both ended up going to this thing. I saw Anne and she was cute, and I was a nerd and I was afraid to talk to her."

Anne: "About halfway through the night, our friend comes over to me and she said, "My friend Wil thinks you're cute." My New Year's resolution was no men for six months, so I didn't think anything of it. Then a few days later she invited me to go to the movies with her and her boyfriend, and she said, "Oh, my friend Wil's coming, is that OK?" I'm like, "Yeah, that's cool." And so we've been together ever since. Twenty years later."

Anne, you really didn't know Wil was a famous actor?

Anne: "I didn't know who he was at all, no idea. It's funny because people just assume I was a Star Trek fan, and that's why we're together. There was a Star Trek convention in London over Easter weekend four months after we met, and he had asked me if I wanted to go with him. I was like, "Sweet, I've never been to London. What's a Star Trek convention?" It was sold out the entire time, and that was my first experience with it. It was so amazing and terrifying at the same time."

On balancing career and personal life:

Wil: "That was this moment of realization for me, that I was at a point where I couldn't have both. I made a choice, like, I was going to have a family or I was going to have a failing career. I couldn't have both, and I chose the family, and I started writing. It's worked out more or less."

Anne: "We actually met with a therapist before we got married, and she asked us to write down in importance the things in our life. Wil wrote career first, and career was at the bottom for me. Career was at the top of his because he spent so much of his childhood working that he thought that had to be the most important thing in his life if he was going to be successful. The one clear thing I remember that she talked to us about was that. Sometimes in your life, the order of importance of those things will juggle, but if you're talking about going into this marriage, what's a priority shouldn't be the career. You need to put your oxygen mask on yourself before you help other people, and your family life and your personal relationships should come first."

Over the years, Wil, you've become more high-profile now that comic book and con culture has become so mainstream. You've become this personality that represents it. How does this affect your relationship?

Wil: "There's no such thing as a single-edged sword in this particular industry. There are a lot of really terrific things; I'm creatively satisfied most of the time, and I'm able to earn enough to not worry and to help provide for our kids and hire a couple people to work with us to make our lives easier."

Anne:  "It makes things busier, and so it's really important for us that we still make the time for ourselves."

Read the full interview at Cosmopolitan.