Jane Kaczmarek has married her high school sweetheart, 50 years after they first dated.
Jane Kaczmarek marries high school sweetheart
The 70-year-old actress – who was previously married to West Wing and Handmaid’s Tale star Bradley Whitford from 1992 to 2010 – reconnected with Rusty Long when she returned to their hometown for her 50th high school reunion in 2024.
When they went out to dinner with a group of friends, “it was just immediate”, according to Malcolm in the Middle star Kaczmarek and they got engaged in February 2025.
She told PEOPLE: “There’s one Linda Ronstadt song, ‘I think I’m gonna love you for a long long time’. I mean, for 50 years that song always took me back to Rusty Long.”
After dinner, the pair went back to Kaczmarek’s childhood home and then, “we went in the living room that hasn’t been redecorated since 1968 and just made out on the couch”.
He proposed at a Robert Burns-themed gathering when the host asked guests to make toasts, and according to Jane, “Rusty said, ‘I would like to toast to romance. I’ve been in love with Jane my entire life, and I want to ask her to marry me’. It was heaven.”
The pair got married in July 2025, with full approval from Jane’s children, Frances, 28, George, 26, and Mary Louisa, 23, and Long’s kids and grandchildren.
She said: “They loved him from the minute they met him. Their father [Whitford] had gotten married a couple years earlier. And the thing children want, they really want their parent to be happy.”
The happy couple are currently splitting their time between Wisconsin and Pasadena, California.
Jane said: “You can be really corny because part of you is still feeling like a high school kid.
“It’s at that part of your life now where we both had other spouses. Our children are raised, our careers have gone well. It’s like a fairy tale.”
Bradley, 66, met his second wife Amy Landecker in 2014 on the set of the Amazon series Transparent.
They began dating in 2015 and later appeared together on The Handmaid’s Tale.
The couple tied the knot in 2019.
