Harry Connick Jr reveals his secret to 30-year marriage with wife Jill

8 August 2024, 11:16

Three decades is a long time.

And it's certainly a most impressive amount of time when you realise it's the distance you've gone in a marriage with your husband or wife.

Naturally, people have their methods of ensuring their marriages go smoothly by keeping their partners as happy as possible.

But there's no one-size-fits-all approach to making the best out of a marriage as the years roll on, of course.

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That's certainly the case that Harry Connick Jr put forward when recently discussing his long and healthy marriage to wife Jill Goodacre Connick.

In an interview with People magazine ahead of the release of his new Netflix film, Find Me Falling, Harry insisted there's no "rule" to making a marriage a successful one, instead focusing on their "way of life" together.

"We trust each other, we love each other, we communicate. But when you say it's a rule, it's almost like we got to adhere to this," the 56-year-old singer said.

"We don't really roll like that. We just wake up every day and we're thankful for each other and try to be good parents and good spouses to one another."

"It's different for everybody. Certain things that work for us may not work for other people, but we're not too big on rules."

Harry first met Jill - a former Victoria's Secret model who later starred in sitcom Friends - in a chance encounter when he was filming the 1990 movie, Memphis Belle.

"I was staying in L.A. Jill walked past me at the hotel pool, and I introduced myself," he told Glamour magazine in 2007.

"She had a really strong handshake. If that had been it between us, just that moment, I would've thought about it for the rest of my life."

During that same interview however, Harry revealed that he wasn't the only one who was immediately smitten.

"What's really funny is that [Jill] called her mom that night and said, 'I met the guy I'm going to marry.' Of course, she didn't let me know," he added.

A year later, Harry penned the song 'Jill' in tribute to the love of his life which featured on his Grammy Award-nominated album, Blue Light, Red Light.

Four years later on 16th April 1994 they married, and have remained happily married ever since.

In 2014, Harry reflected: "I married my best friend. And I listen! Ultimately I've been very fortunate - I understand that that doesn't happen for everybody but it happened for us and we take it very seriously."

Harry and Jill had their first daughter Georgia Tatum two years after they married, then welcomed two more daughters in Sara Kate and Charlotte.

The pair have taken on a take-it-as-it-comes approach to parenting too, telling People magazine recently: "I think that we've tried to lead by example. I'm not an advice giver."

"If somebody asks me, 'Hey, what do you think about this?' I might tell them, but I've always found that giving advice, especially unsolicited advice, tends to make people shy away."

Connick added: "The whole point of the way Jill and I tried to raise our girls was to get them to have self-worth and try to make good decisions. And I think they will."

"So, if they need us, they'll come [to us]. But, it's not like, 'Make sure you communicate,' or, 'Find someone you can always laugh with.' That's just not my thing."

"For me and Jill, all we really want is for them to be happy and fulfilled. And all three of them seem to be in a place where they're getting, that they really are living these full lives and are really having great experiences doing the things that they love."

"That's all we care about."