Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes have been together for over 14 years and share two children. But it’s understandable if you’d forgotten, because they’re known to keep things incredibly low-key.
For a bit of context, Ryan and Eva met and fell in love while playing a couple in the 2012 movie, The Place Beyond The Pines.
Adorably, Ryan previously said he never wanted to have kids until he and Eva crossed paths, telling GQ in 2023: “There were moments on The Place Beyond The Pines where we were pretending to be a family, and I didn’t really want it to be pretend anymore.”
They welcomed their first child, Esmeralda, in 2014, and two years later, they became a family of four with a second daughter, Amada.
After becoming a mom, Eva scaled back her acting career to focus on raising their kids, calling the decision a “no-brainer.” “I’m so lucky, and I was like, ‘If I can have this time with my children…’ and I still worked,” she said on Today in 2024. “I just didn’t act, because acting takes you on locations, [and] it takes you away. It was almost just like a non-verbal agreement that it was, OK, he’s going to work, and I’m going to work. I’m just going to work here.”
On the other hand, Ryan’s acting career has only skyrocketed in the past decade or so, thanks to movies like The Nice Guys, Blade Runner 2049, La La Land, and Barbie. Although that hasn’t meant that Eva has joined him in the limelight.
Throughout their relationship, Ryan and Eva have made only one red carpet appearance together, which was to promote The Place Beyond the Pines in 2012. Even when Ryan was nominated for Oscars in 2017 and 2024, Eva did not attend the ceremonies with him.
For clarity, Eva’s absence from events like these has never sparked breakup rumors, as the couple will often mention each other in interviews. In the past decade, they have been photographed together just twice — once leaving a Saturday Night Live afterparty in 2017 and, most recently, watching the Paris Olympics in 2024 — neither occasion an official appearance.
In 2023, amid all the Barbie hype, Eva responded to a fan on Instagram who questioned why she’d not been on the red carpet with Ryan. “We don’t do those things together,” she said at the time.
Which brings us to now. Ryan is currently promoting his new space movie, Project Hail Mary, which hits theaters on March 20 and is already being hailed as potentially one of “the best movies of the decade.”
While preparing to host SNL for a fourth time this coming weekend, Ryan made a quick stop to chat with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show last night — and it wound up being rather exciting.
Towards the end of the interview, Ryan mentioned that it was Eva’s birthday. Revealing that she was backstage, he asked Jimmy and the audience if they would sing “Happy Birthday” to her — and that they did!
A producer went backstage to get an unassuming Eva from Ryan’s dressing room, and she was filmed walking out into the studio, wearing a casual outfit that included a blue and white striped Louis Vuitton cardigan that Ryan recently wore during an appearance on Jeopardy!.
Ryan took Eva’s hand and led her to the stage to a cheering audience, but the excitement didn’t end there.
After Eva took a moment to pay tribute to all the teachers and students in the live audience, Jimmy welcomed a high school marching band to perform “Happy Birthday” for her.
Honestly, the whole thing was adorable. The clip is already racking up views on TikTok, and, for some fans, this was their first time seeing Ryan and Eva in the same room, which is pretty wild.
One of my favorite things about Ryan and Eva is that they’re so private, we don’t actually know for sure if they’re married or not. In 2022, Eva began publicly referring to Ryan as her husband, seemingly confirming they had privately tied the knot. But that’s about all we know!