Inside Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell's Top-Secret Love Story

Keri Russell & Matthew Rhys Joke About Golden Globe Noms

Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys were perfectly content to keep their blossoming romance a secret while playing married spies on The Americans.

But their cover was blown prematurely when a burglar broke into Russell's Brooklyn home one night and shoved some of her stuff into his backpack. Police caught the thief, after which the District Attorney's office wanted to make a big show of returning the couple's personal items.

"They were like, 'Oh, we'd love to bring you your things back and present them to you on set and do a photograph for the D.A.," Rhys recalled during an April appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. Russell, ever the diplomat, "was like, 'No, no, that's all right! I'll just come to a precinct to pick them up.'"

She really insisted they not come, but they did anyway—"God bless them," Rhys added, "and thank you for their service"—and crew members were quick to notice that what the police assumed was Russell's bag actually belonged to the Welsh actor.

"Lo, it came to pass that we were together," the Widow's Bay star quipped. "Everyone [found out], one clean sweep. Didn't have to hire a publicist, it was great."

Incidentally, this was in 2014, a while before they welcomed their now-10-year-old son Sam. Russell also shares son River, 19, and daughter Willa, 13, with ex-husband Shane Deary.

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Russell's rep confirmed in early December 2013 that she and Deary, a carpenter and contractor, had separated over the summer after six years of marriage. Weeks later, she and Rhys sparked dating rumors when they were photographed looking sweet on each other while out and about in Brooklyn, where they're still based to this day.

"Oh, we just sort of started having sex,” Russell cracked to the New Yorker last year when asked how she and Rhys first got together. “No, I’m kidding. I don’t know.”

In reality, it happened "slowly," the 50-year-old continued. "With a lot of, kind of, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t. Oh, this is terrible, we shouldn’t!’...Inevitably, a bottle of red wine would be opened.”

It turned out, however, that she and Rhys already knew each other, having met after a kickball-and-beer-fueled party in L.A. more than a decade prior.

"I very drunkenly asked her for her number when she was a young, single, slip of a thing," Rhys shared during a 2017 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, "so I sort of knew then when I was 26."

Years later, according to Russell, "We did all the readings together and all the things, and after a heavy dose of fight training, all sweaty, at lunch, you said, 'Oh, you know we've met before. I said, 'No we haven't,' and you said, 'Yeah, we've met before, like 10 years ago at kickball.' As soon as he said that, I knew exactly what [he meant] and I opened my eyes, like, 'Oh! Of course I remember that.'"

The Diplomat star cracked, "You were that buffoon that wouldn't stop calling."

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Luckily, they both picked up the phone when they had the chance to play Soviet KGB agents so committed to the cause they've had two children together and present as the all-American nuclear family.

He and Russell "had to do a chemistry test for this," Rhys told E! News in January 2013 when the intense FX drama premiered. "The show kind of relies on our chemistry—or our lack of it—in the beginning. And that in itself is a very specific kind of chemistry."

And he wasn't kidding when he promised "more twists and turns than a roller coaster."

The now-51-year-old was, of course, talking about the show's plot twists, as his and Russell's felicitous off-screen love affair didn't take away from the increasingly complicated dynamic playing out on screen, including in the form of revealing sex scenes. (Her pregnancy, meanwhile, was camouflaged rather than written into the series.)

"I get a little protective," Rhys admitted to The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. "I’m like, “Can someone get her a f--kin’ robe, please?! She’s standing there naked, we’ve cut for five seconds, Jesus Christ.' And they’re like, 'Dude, this is the fourth season.'"

And the couple delivered no matter what was demanded of them, both scoring Emmy nominations in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

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When Rhys won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the show's final season, he concluded his acceptance speech with, "To the woman who truly got me this award, who just stands in front of me every day and puts up with me, she said 'If you propose to me I will punch you clean in the mouth'—I don't have the word, I don't have the time, none of which do you justice."

(Russell may have meant she'd punch him if he proposed from the stage, but the couple do remain unwed, Rhys telling The Times in 2025 that they "literally haven't got round to marriage yet.")

They've walked countless red carpets together since, with Russell notching her first Actor Award for The Diplomat in March, but Rhys is not content being the only Emmy winner in his household.

"I just feel bad," he said on a May episode of Obsessed: The Podcast, recalling how only he went home with a trophy in 2018. "Not to take away anything from Claire Foy from The Crown because she was incredible in that. I just wish Keri got it because she was so incredible."

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Rhys will have yet another chance to root for Russell—and vice versa—as she is likely to score her third lead actress in a drama nod for The Diplomat when Emmy nominations are announced July 8, while he's a likely two-time candidate, for lead actor in a comedy for his turn as the mayor of a cursed New England town in Widow's Bay as well as lead actor in a limited or anthology series playing a darker brand of widower in The Beast in Me.

Being nominated at the same time "keeps our relationship together," Rhys quipped to E! on the 2019 Golden Globes red carpet. Added Russell, "Thank God we don't have to break up."

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