Whoopi Goldberg is a woman who prefers her own company. She’s been married three times, but none of them worked out or even lasted particularly long. And she’s on the record as saying she never wants to tie the knot again.
Goldberg said in a 2016 interview with the New York Times, “I’m much happier on my own. I can spend as much time with somebody as I want to spend, but I’m not looking to be with somebody forever or live with someone. I don’t want somebody in my house.” Pressed on the issue, she continued, “Yes. I’m the round peg, and marriage is the square hole.”
That witty line, “I don’t want somebody in my house” soon became a mantra for women who were simply not looking to get married. And Kat Dennings was, at one point, one of those women. She came on The View today to promote her new show Shifting Gears, and the discussion turned to relationships. “It’s the worst, isn’t it?” Dennings said. “I was in a few long relationships and I tried to date a little bit. It was just a nightmare. I actually live by a quote from you, Whoopi. Correct me if this is the wrong quote, but I did look it up to make sure: ‘I don’t want somebody in my house.'”
That made all the ladies of The View laugh. Dennings carried on, “Those were my feelings towards marriage in general until I met my husband. And now, I like him in my house. I want him in my house!”
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And isn’t that what marriage is all about? Dennings met her husband, musician Andrew W.K, in 2021 and they married in November 2023. It was a breezy engagement by Dennings’ own account, one born out of a sudden rush of love rather than a lot of planning. “We had a special moment that makes me believe in magic,” she said on The Drew Barrymore Show back in 2022, before the wedding. “We were doing kissing, and we had, like, a shared feeling. I felt this intense … thing that I was like, ‘This is my person. This is it. I can’t live without him. This is the man I’m supposed to be with.’ And we looked at each other, and we both proposed at the same time.”
Dennings went on, “Not planned. No knee down — I don’t even remember what happened after that. We just were like ‘Should we get married?’ And ‘Yes.’ I just burst into tears.”
But Goldberg doesn’t want any of that mushy stuff in her life, not anymore. “Look, people expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married,” she told the New York Times Magazine in 2019. “So I kept trying to do that, but I didn’t want to share information with somebody else. I didn’t want anybody asking me why I was doing what I was doing, or to have to make the other person feel better. But if you’re in a relationship, you have to do those things, and it took me a while to figure out that I didn’t want to.”
Whether you want to get married or not, both points of view are equally valid. And it’s true that some people change their minds either way. Just don’t expect a shock marriage announcement from Goldberg.
Published: Jan 7, 2025 02:59 pm