The Cast Of The Gilded Age And Their Real-Life Partners

Like many period pieces, "The Gilded Age" demonstrates that marriage was regularly used for status and convenience, often orchestrated to climb the social ladder. And, like "Downton Abbey," "Bridgerton," and other similar drama series, the show has fans tuning in avidly to stay up to date on the familial, political, and romantic plot lines. In particular, a central story of Season 3 saw the outcome of Gladys Russell's arranged marriage to the Duke of Buckingham.

"For every generation, marriage is a crapshoot. Nowadays, we see much more of each other than they did in the 19th century," series creator Julian Fellowes told Deadline in June 2025. "We live together more, and we sleep together, and we do all of these things, but at the end, you don't really know the person you've married until you married them."

The truth about "The Gilded Age" is that, as convincingly as the cast portrays their roles, the actors have found their better halves for what seems to be the right reasons — as far as 21st century expectations go. "The modern world always likes to pretend that it deals with everything better than any previous generation, but you can't take the luck element out of marriage," Fellowes remarked.

Carrie Coon has been absolutely killing it for the past decade with roles in "Gone Girl," "The Post," and "The White Lotus." Since 2022, she's portrayed the cunning and ambitious Bertha Russell on "The Gilded Age," alongside Morgan Spector, her on-screen husband. Although they make a handsome couple as they attempt to break into New York's elite circle, the truth about Carrie Coon is that she's actually married to another man.

Back in 2010, upon arriving at a callback audition for Steppenwolf Theatre's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," she ended up meeting writer and actor Tracy Letts. Coon landed the role and the two began dating. Three years later, they were ready to get married but had been struggling to find the time in their busy schedules. As Coon explained to Rolling Stone in April 2018, instead of letting their marriage license expire, they tied the knot in the hospital while Letts was "high as a kite" on painkillers while recovering from gallbladder surgery. "Tracy's WGA insurance covered that whole visit, so it was a very inexpensive wedding," she joked. Coon and Letts now share two children and have collaborated a number of times on varying projects.

Though self-made millionaire George Russell is ruthless in business, he's also a loving husband and father. Morgan Spector, who plays the railroad tycoon on "The Gilded Age," seems to have just the latter characteristics in common with his character, as he's married to actor Rebecca Hall and they had a daughter in 2018. The couple met while working together on a stage show, like Carrie Coon and Tracy Letts, in 2014 and got married the following year.

Come May 2017, Spector and Hall were due to perform alongside each other on stage yet again in Clare Lizzimore's "Animal." But while the famous couple is happy to talk about their craft, they prioritize their privacy above all. As Hall told The New York Times in promoting the play, "We work together, but our relationship is still ours."

It's understandable, given the attention their respective work brings the couple. That's why, as Hall explained to People in March 2024, she and Spector like to keep away from the hustle and bustle. "We live in the countryside away from everything, a very rural situation," she said. "We're actually pretty quiet people."

The "will-they, won't they" dynamic of Marian Brook (played by Louisa Jacobson) and Larry Russell (played by Harry Richardson) has been enough to keep "The Gilded Age" fans tuning in week after week. One thing you may not know about Meryl Streep's daughter is that she's in an even sweeter relationship in real life, and they made it official on social media before Season 3 aired.

In June 2024, Jacobson shared an update on Instagram (via People) with a handful of selfies of herself and her girlfriend, producer Anna Blundell. "Blessed to be entering the Joyful New Era bb," the actor wrote alongside the snaps. At the end of her caption, Jacobson included emojis of a heart on fire and the rainbow flag, signifying this post was more than confirming her relationship; "The Gilded Age" star was also coming out to the public for the first time.

During a May 2025 conversation with Elle, Jacobson expressed how she felt about opening up like that to the world the year prior. "I'm so lucky to have had so much support," she said of coming out. "I feel like my life is expanding. ... It's a beautiful thing."

Throughout the series, we learn of Peggy Scott's tragic backstory on "The Gilded Age," particularly the devastating result of her first love. Thankfully, the truth about Denée Benton, the actor who plays Agnes van Rhijn's secretary, is that she has a much more optimistic love story with her real-life husband.

Benton and actor Carl Lundstedt both studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University and were in the same year. As "The Gilded Age" star's beau explained to Vogue during a joint profile in June 2020, "It was a very small program, so you get to know each other very quickly and well." After dating for five and a half years, Lundstedt enacted an elaborate proposal plan that caught Benton off guard. While pretending he'd dropped his wallet somewhere at The Met Cloisters, he got down on one knee in the middle of the museum. "The joke's on me because my one requirement for our proposal was that he surprise me — even though I'm a controlling Capricorn and don't really love surprises," Benton joked. The couple eventually tied the knot in January 2020 in Florida among their 250 guests, just barely missing their window before the chaos of the pandemic began.

Like her "The Gilded Age" character Gladys Russell, Taissa Farmiga knows what she wants in life. But while her on-screen counterpart has had significantly little say in what her future holds, the actor has gotten to choose her own path. What you probably never knew about Farmiga is that, after dating for four years, she secretly tied the knot with filmmaker Hadley Klein during the pandemic.

In November 2020, Farmiga revealed to her Instagram followers that she and Klein had taken their relationship to the next level seven weeks prior. "Married my best friend," the actor wrote in the caption, alongside a snap of the two standing in front of their wedding cake. Farmiga donned a pretty white dress and face mask with the word "Bride" embroidered in cursive as she held up her ring finger. Klein smiled with frosting on his face.

While some may have been shocked that the couple got married without informing their followers on the day, others picked up on their relationship status update via Klein's Instagram post he shared a week after their wedding. "Happy, happy birthday to my superhotbutalsocool wife," he wrote in the post. "So happy to have an 'excuse' to stuff our faces full of birthday sweets all week."

Every couple is different and moves at their own pace. Blake Ritson played old money bachelor Oscar van Rhijn on "The Gilded Age," who didn't rush into finding a suitable heiress to marry despite being closeted and in love with a man. Like his character, the actor and his now-wife, Hattie Morahan (who guest-starred on "The Gilded Age" in Season 3 as Lady Sarah Vere) took their time settling down together.

The couple met while studying at Cambridge in the late '90s and have been inseparable ever since. While it's unclear when Ritson and Morahan became engaged, it took well over a decade for the two to tie the knot. "We're so happy as we are," Morahan told Express in July 2015 when the topic of marriage came up. She was asked if there would be any wedding plans within the year, to which the actor replied, "I don't think so. Maybe when we're 80!"

In 2016, the couple welcomed their daughter Amity to the world, followed by a son in 2020. Ritson and Morahan have remained incredibly private when it comes to their relationship, but it was revealed that they eventually did get hitched sometime between late 2024 and early 2025.

Bannister, the butler of the van Rhijn household on "The Gilded Age" may be in everybody's business, but he's lovable nonetheless. It was actor Simon Jones who brought the character to life, known for his roles in the 2019 "Downton Abbey" movie and British series from the '80s like "Brideshead Revisited." He's been known to portray tragic characters, but sadly, tragedy struck for real when his wife of nearly 40 years died from leukemia in January 2020.

Nancy Lewis was the head of publicity for Buddah Records when the company began working with Monty Python, the iconic British comedy troupe. Throughout the '70s, Lewis, who was American, was set on making the group a household name across the pond. Lewis continued to represent Monty Python into the '80s, when Jones joined the cast of 1983's "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life."

The couple were married later that same year and went on to have a son named Tim. Throughout their relationship, Lewis helped her husband prepare for roles and was supportive of his career. "She was a great enabler," Jones told The New York Times shortly after her death.

Church, the no-nonsense butler of the Russell family on "The Gilded Age" is ironically portrayed by Jack Gilpin — whom we bet you didn't know is a retired ordained priest. His filmography is long, but he's in good company as acting seems to run in the family. Gilpin met Ann McDonough by chance while she was with her friend, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, as she explained during a conversation with the Lincoln Center Theater blog in April 2018.

"We were at a party," McDonough recalled. "And we looked over at Jack. I told Wendy, 'He's too good for me.' And Wendy replied, 'No, he's not.' That encouragement was helpful." The rest was history, as the couple tied the knot in 1985 and went on to have three children — one of whom is Betty Gilpin, three-time Emmy nominee star of "GLOW."

Both McDonough and Gilpin enjoyed relative success as actors, though she leaned into stage productions whereas "The Gilded Age" star had a separate calling. Becoming ordained wasn't out of the blue for Gilpin, as he'd gotten a Master of Divinity degree and had practiced preaching beforehand. After getting ordained and beginning his service in 2012, Gilpin retired in 2020 but continued acting, reprising his role as Church in each season of the HBO series.

You likely know Cynthia Nixon as Miranda Hobbes from "Sex and the City" and "And Just Like That." However, her role as the kindhearted widow Ada Forte (née Brook) in "The Gilded Age" may be even more likable. Cynthia Nixon's impressive net worth continues to grow thanks to her various HBO projects, and her personal life is also quite golden: In 2012, she married education advocate and activist Christine Marinoni. 

But before the actor ever met Marinoni, she was in a relationship with her high school sweetheart, Danny Mozes. Together they had two children, Seph and Charles, before separating in 2003. As Nixon told Radio Times in March 2017 (via Stylist), "I had never dated a woman before or even kissed a woman or anything." When she began dating Marinoni in 2004, Marinoni was concerned about whether or not she was ready to be in a relationship with a woman. 

"When we started seeing each other, Christine kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for me to panic about what this would mean — to my career or to myself — as if somehow I just hadn't noticed that she was a woman," Nixon remarked. Fortunately, Marinoni felt better after meeting "The Gilded Age" star's mother. The two got engaged in 2009 and added their son Max to the family in 2011.

Christine Baranski, who portrayed Agnes van Rijn on "The Gilded Age," and her late husband Matthew Cowles, known for "All My Children," met while working together on a play back in 1982. All it took was for the soap star to offer Baranski a ride home, and she was hooked. They two were together for over 30 years, having wed in 1983 and welcoming two daughters.

Baranski has had a stunning transformation since those early theater days and put decades of projects under her belt. However, like her "The Gilded Age" character, she's also experienced pain and tragedy over the years. Cowles died in 2014 from congestive heart failure. "The death of a loved one is not only deeply sad but also very disorienting," she told Parade in 2017. "When you've had a 30-year marriage and sat across from this person every morning having coffee, it's so strange. Someone is there and then suddenly they're not there to talk to ever again.

Interestingly, as Baranski told Deadline in August 2024, Cowles had a strange connection to "The Gilded Age" long before it was ever created. While at a party, she approached Julian Fellowes, creator of "Downton Abbey," and told him Cowles had ancestry that linked to the Drexel family ("One of the New York aristocratic Gilded Age families," she explained). "All those years later I get a call saying, 'Julian has written this show for HBO, and they're offering you this.' I was the first person to be offered a role," Baranski remarked.

As the Russell family's housekeeper, Mrs. Bruce is under a lot of pressure. And, given the circumstances of her husband's institutionalization, it's safe to say her love life isn't top of mind for "The Gilded Age" character. Thankfully, actor Celia Keenan-Bolger's life is quite the opposite, as she's found who seems to be her perfect match — and it was practically love at first sight. At least, it was for Keenan-Bolger.

In 2002, she attended a production of "The Butter and Egg Man" at the Atlantic Theater, in which John Ellison Conlee was starring. "[I] was very taken with his performance," Keenan-Bolger told Broadway Buzz in January 2011. The HBO star asked around whether he had a girlfriend, and someone assured he did. "When his name would come up, I would always say, 'Ah, John Conlee, my boyfriend from "The Butter and Egg Man." I love that guy!'" she remarked. Eventually, her friend and actor Sarah Saltzberg wound up working with Conlee and set the two up.

Keenan-Bolger finally married her dream man and they had a child together in 2015. In speaking with Playbill back in September 2016, she recalled the discussions they had about having their son. "We were together for seven years before we had a baby ... We said, 'Our life is so good. Are we really just going to give up all the freedom? Is that genuinely what we want?'" Keenan-Bolger said. Apparently, it was.

There seems to be a running theme between the cast of "The Gilded Age" and their love of theater. After all, it's how a number of the actors have met their spouses. It's unclear whether Kristine Nielsen (who portrays Mrs. Bauer, the motherly German cook for the van Rhijn family on the series) first crossed paths with her husband at the theater, we do know that she's done a number of plays and that he's a fellow actor.

Brent Langdon's filmography isn't quite as long as Nielsen's long list of credits, but he has had some memorable roles in "The Post," "The Irishman," and "Killers of the Flower Moon." Nielsen and Langdon kept their relationship relatively private, so little can be said about their history, but they do look incredibly sweet together. During a May 2013 conversation with The New York Times, Nielsen shared that her life took a turn for the better when she met Brent Langdon. "For women, it's a hard world," she said.

Yet another pair of performers found one another when Kelli O'Hara's friend, with whom she was co-starring in a play, decided to set her up with actor, theater runner, and musician Greg Naughton. It took several months for "The Gilded Age" star to accept the blind date and, in December 2002, she attended a concert he was performing in. "It was just before everyone Googled everybody, so I wasn't sure who Greg was," O'Hara told The New York Times in August 2007. But, when Naughton began to sing, she was captivated almost instantly.

Her real-life relationship is a welcome departure from that of Aurora Fane, her on-screen character whose marriage doesn't exactly go to plan. The couple tied the knot in 2007 and two years later they had a son, Owen, who surprised them by arriving three weeks early. O'Hara's performance schedule shifted significantly after becoming a mother, but she thankfully had tons of support, as she noted while talking to the Lincoln Center Theater blog in December 2009. "My husband, Greg, is a wonderful father, and we have a family cousin who's been helping out, but no nanny," the actor said. Since then, she and Naughton have welcomed one more child, a daughter, in 2013.