It’s a match made in teen TV heaven. Leighton Meester, who played Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl, and Adam Brody, who played Seth Cohen on The O.C., were first linked back in 2011. News of their romance sent fans into a frenzy. Since then, they’ve quietly married, co-starred in a few films, and have now welcomed their second child, a son, together. Below, a rewind on their low-key love, including what they’ve said about each other’s iconic CW characters.
2011
In 2011, Brody and Meester appeared in the indie comedy The Oranges. “They were always close and friendly,” a source told Us Weekly of the duo’s dynamic during filming.
2012
The co-stars reunited in September 2012 for a screening of The Oranges in NYC.
Us reported that Meester split from her actor boyfriend Aaron Himelstein over the holidays. She had previously dated her Gossip Girl co-star Sebastian Stan. Brody had been most recently linked to Hustlers director Lorene Scafaria and dated his O.C. co-star Rachel Bilson until 2006.
February 2013
Us Weekly broke the news that Brody and Meester were dating on February 6, 2013. The article claimed that the pair had been “hanging out” for weeks, with a trip to Bangkok at the start of the year and stop at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on February 1.
A couple days after their relationship became public, Meester hid from paparazzi in Brody’s car, per E! News. Towards the end of the month, the outlet snapped them walking to a Mexican restaurant in Venice, California.
June 2013
Brody and Meester made their first public appearance as a couple at the premiere of his film, Some Girl(s). They held hands during the outing and posed alongside Brody’s co-star Mia Maestro.
September 2013
Neither Meester nor Brody confirmed their 7-month relationship. But E! spotted the couple walking through NYC towards the end of the year.
November 2013
On November 20, E! reported that the couple was engaged after less than a year of dating. Neither actor weighed in on the news themselves. A month later, the pair was spotted kissing in South Africa.
February 2014
On February 18, Us Weekly confirmed that Meester and Brody had tied the knot in a secret wedding, according to multiple sources. “Leighton and Adam got married in Northern California by the ocean a couple of weeks ago,” a source told E! News. “It was a very small and intimate wedding with close family and friends. It was beautiful.”
E! hinted at a possible honeymoon spot, reporting that the couple had recently been “seen relaxing” at St. Regis Punta Mita Resort in Mexico. A few weeks prior, Meester reportedly had her bachelorette party at Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood.
June 2014
Meester and Brody walked their first red carpet as a married couple at the Tony Awards. She wore a white Antonio Berardi gown and he wore a dark suit with lightly-patterned tie. Meester had made her Broadway debut in March 2014, co-starring alongside James Franco and Chris O’Dowd in the play Of Mice and Men.
August 2014
Brody slyly referenced his relationship with Meester during an Ask Me Anything with fans on Reddit. A fan asked Brody, “How’s Leighton?” According to Us Weekly he responded, “She’s swell!” He also covered how many kids he’d like: “I say twelve. And I decide,” he joked. When asked what life was like at the Brody-Meester household he replied, “I do some stuff but she definitely does the heavy lifting (figuratively),” he said of Meester. “Literally, I do the heavy lifting.”
November 2014
The married couple re-teamed onscreen in the indie comedy Life Partners, which sees the friendship between Meester and Gillian Jacobs’ characters torn apart when Jacobs begins dating a character played by Brody.
September 2015
Us confirmed that Brody and Meester had welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Arlo Day. The new parents did not confirm that they were expecting (when rumors swirled in May), nor did they reveal the baby’s gender or name. TMZ reported that Arlo was born on August 4, per the birth certificate.
August 2016
Brody and Meester kept quiet for the next year after their daughter’s birth. However, they did step out together for the Startup premiere in Los Angeles.
January 2017
The couple attended the 2017 InStyle Golden Globes after party on January 8. Meester wore a white Galvan dress with cobalt-colored Sophia Webster pumps, while Brody wore a dark blue suit and tie combo.
March 2017
In an Access Hollywood interview, Meester mentioned she had a crush on Brody when she was younger. She said, “When his show came out, I think I was just like ‘I don’t want to watch that show, it’s a teenage show,’ even though I was sixteen but all my friends watched it.” She added, “I think maybe I thought he was cute. I remember he was a screensaver of one of my best friends when we were like seventeen. I saw it from afar. Her [screensaver] kind of changed every week, but I was like, who is that?” The actress then admitted that they were “meant to be” together.
June 2017
Later that year, the couple granted their first joint interview to Entertainment Tonight while volunteering at Feeding America’s Summer Hunger Awareness event in Los Angeles.
During the conversation, the couple joked that they “occasionally” talked about how their iconic teen characters had ended up together in real life. “Once a year, randomly, on our Seth and Blair day,” Brody joked. “It’s good for a laugh.” Meester added, “It doesn’t excite us, I think, because we’re just human beings … but it’s exciting to us that it’s exciting to you. It’s cool.”
August 2018
Meester spoke to Entertainment Tonight about her and Brody’s work-life balance. “I think we’re a pretty modern couple,” the actress said. “I also think the nice thing about being an actor [is] you can work a lot, and when work is work, it’s, like, super intense and long hours and you might not see your family for a long period. But then I’ll have, like, months off at a time, so I can really be home and spend time [with Arlo], so I prefer it that way,” she said.
September 2018
It would be more than a year before Meester would open up about their relationship again. In an interview with PorterEdit, she said, “I wouldn’t change anything [in the past] because I’m happy where I am now. And I think that’s one of the many wonderful parts of not only having a child and meeting your soulmate, but also, I feel really lucky career-wise, really in a place that I want to be.”
March 2019
Meester also spoke about her life as a wife and mother with Shape magazine. “I just don’t believe in balance,” she explained to the outlet. “I think that’s not possible if you’re a working mother—and with single mothers, I cannot even imagine that. Some days my husband cooks dinner and some days I do. Other days, I’m too tired and I eat a bowl of cereal for dinner. It’s just the thing we do to make it work.” She also mentioned that Brody had taught her how to surf.
That same month, the couple attended their first red carpet in more than two years. Meester was on hand to support Brody at the premiere of his new superhero flick Shazam!.
May 2019
On May 8, Brody guest-starred on the season 1 finale of Meester’s ABC comedy, Single Parents. In the episode, he plays Derek, the ex of her character, Angie.
When asked about working with her husband for the third time, Meester told The Hollywood Reporter, “He’s my best friend,” adding, “I wanna work with him on everything, and I think he’s the best in everything.” Brody went on to appear in four subsequent episodes of the series—two in October 2019 and two in January 2020.
July 2019
Brody and Meester made a rare public appearance at the film premiere of Ode to Joy, posing with director Jason Winer in West Hollywood.
August 2019
The following month, the couple had another public date night at the premiere of Brody’s film, Ready or Not. She wore a salmon and purple belted Michael Kors dress while he opted for a black suit and plaid tie. Meester went IG official with her husband of more than five years. She captioned a shot of them at the premiere, “Me and my hero #readyornotmovie.”
Brody opened up about his marriage in a profile with GQ. “She’s more inherently private than I am,” he said of his wife. “I don’t seek publicity but if I’m sitting next to you on the subway, I’ll tell you everything about me.” He explained further, “We’re homebodies. We don’t go to a lot of things that perhaps we could, and don’t seek out promotion in that way. I’m not s–tting on anyone who monetizes that aspect of their life because I get it. But we’ve found this great balance so far that really works for us. We’re also not very active on social media.”
When asked about the fact that both he and Meester played beloved characters on CW teen dramas he responded, “It’s not bizarre. To be perfectly honest, it was a little embarrassing. I guess love knows no bounds?”
October 2019
Meester commemorated her husband’s return to Single Parents with a photo of him leaning against a trailer on set. “My boyfriend’s back. Tonight on #SingleParents on @abcnetwork at 9:30/8:30c,” she captioned the Instagram post.
March 2020
On March 28, Brody’s ex and former O.C. co-star Rachel Bilson referenced his marriage to Meester. InStyle posted a throwback photo of the former couple with the caption, “#rachelbilson and #adambrody’s breakup basically ruined high school for all of us.” Bilson hilariously commented, “IM SORRY! He fared really well!”
The exes also reunited in August 2019, when Brody and Bilson unexpectedly met at the airport. “Ran into my ol buddy from jfk to lax #californiaherewecome🤓,” Bilson captioned her Instagram photo of the pair.
April 2020
Us Weekly reported that Meester and Brody were expecting their second child on April 1. The report came a day after she was spotted by the Daily Mail on a walk in Los Angeles. However, the couple didn’t publicly confirm that they were expanding their family at the time.
September 2020
Brody announced the two recently welcomed their second child while making an appearance on Twitch show The Fun Time Boys Game Night Spectacular, per The Sun. When a fellow participant remarked, “Adam, you have a new baby,” he casually confirmed the news. “I have a new—yeah, since last I played I have a new kid,” Brody said, revealing the baby’s gender. “I have a boy and he’s a dream, he’s a dream boy.”
October 2020
The following month, the Shazam! actor opened up to People about the welcoming of his son. “It’s been pretty magical,” Brody said. “It’s such a crazy time for everyone, and we’re so, so, so fortunate that we have some of the security we do and have the flexibility with our jobs we do. We talk about it all the time, and we’re just ridiculously fortunate and lucky.”
December 2020
In a Wall Street Journal interview, Brody opened up his experience quarantining with his family. “A big part of our quarantine life is that my wife and I have been surfing our brains out,” he said, via Style Rave. “My wife will come down with our son half an hour, 45 minutes after I’m up and join the party, and we will check the surf on our phones. I’ve been off and on a lifetime surfer. My wife’s relatively new to it but is very dedicated,” Brody said. He later mentioned how Meester helped changed his life during the pandemic. “I was on Twitter so much up until the election, and I enjoy it, I really do, but it’s very addicting. I found myself, as most people, just so pissed off for most of this year and was really happy for about 48 hours after the election and then 48 hours after [that], I was so pissed again. So my wife put a 30-minute time limit on Twitter, and my life has changed.” Brody added, “I’m back to reading books, and I felt my blood pressure lower instantly—I feel a new sense of calm and accomplishment.”
March 2021
Brody opened up about his relationship with Meester on Anna Faris’ Unqualified podcast. He mentioned, per E!, his first initial meeting Meester was through Josh Schwartz, who produced Gossip Girl and The O.C. “Literally the first time we met, that whole cast [Gossip Girl] was eating at Canter’s [restaurant], and I lived at Canter’s for like my entire 20s. And I was leaving, and [John Schwartz] introduced all of us,” Brody said. As the pair filmed Oranges in 2011, Brody explained he had a girlfriend at the time but still found Meester attractive. “I thought she was gorgeous. And even when we did the movie, there was chemistry there, but I was seeing someone,” he said.
He went on mentioned his first initial thoughts about Meester, following their first date later. “I had no idea whether she was a good person or not. And, in fact, kind of assumed she probably wasn’t for like the first handful of years that I didn’t know her, just because, I don’t know, Gossip Girl,” he said.
Later in the interview, Brody shared his admiration for his wife of seven years. “She’s literally like Joan of Arc. She is, like, the strongest, best person I know. She is my moral compass and North Star, and I just can’t say enough good things about her character. It’s crazy.”
April 2021
The following month, Brody was interviewed for the Kelly Clarkson Show. The O.C. actor spoke about his new movie, The Kid Detective, and how having a daughter changed his perspective. “One of the things that’s been interesting and that I am happy to use and implement with my son now is all the female-centric stories, movies, and myths that I’ve seen now that I didn’t get to grow up with,” Brody said. “I am happy to have this whole other catalog of stories to show my son as well,” he added.
March 2023
Brody offered a little inside into the early days of their marriage while on the March 8, 2023, episode of SiriusXM Radio’s The Jess Cagle Show.
“I was never scared of the idea of marriage or kids,” Brody said. “It always seemed like a route I would go eventually, and I was excited…when it came together, when I met the right person.”
He knew that Meester was the right person very soon after they got together.
“My wife and I actually got married very fast after we started dating,” Brody explained. “That’s how sort of easy a decision it was for me and us.”
November 2023
Meester spoke about what makes her marriage to Brody work in an interview with E!, published on November 21. They have a “normal relationship with all the good and the hard. We just make it work,” she said.
“We’re super, super lucky, and I think we recognize how lucky we are with one another,” she continued. “We give each other a lot of respect and time and attention and focus. Like, really put our time and energy into a relationship.”
Editorial Fellow
Savannah Walsh is an Editorial Fellow at ELLE.com.
Starr Savoy is a fellow at ELLE.com, where she writes about celebrity, culture, beauty, and fashion. When she is not working, you will find her pumping iron at the gym, watching Netflix’s latest phenomenon, and indulging in retail therapy.