Melanie Griffith was 14 when she first laid eyes on Don Johnson, who is eight years her senior. At the time, he was starring in 1973’s *The Harrad Experiment* alongside her mother, screen legend Tippi Hedren.
“She fell almost instantly in love with him,” Tippi told *People* in 1989. “It was an adolescent crush.”
Their relationship quickly progressed: Melanie moved in with Don when she was 15, they got engaged at 18, and eloped to Las Vegas to tie the knot on January 8, 1976. This was despite Don admitting he had been keeping company with a beauty queen the night before the wedding.
“We thought it might work better if we were married. It didn’t,” Melanie told *People*. “I got married in order to end the relationship.” They later had the union annulled.
Don spent the first half of the 1980s in a relationship with actress and Andy Warhol muse Patti D’Arbanville.
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Fast forward to today, and Melanie Griffith is planning a wedding of her own. Her daughter, Stella, got engaged to entrepreneur Alex Gruszynski in August 2024. The bride-to-be shared the joyous news with a post captioned, “I get to hang out with my favorite person on earth forever!!!!!!!”
In congratulating the happy couple, Melanie wrote on Instagram:
“He asked. On bended knee. She said yes. Stella and Alex are engaged to be married. Their love story began in pre-school! True love, deep love!”
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Don Johnson met Kelley Phleger, a nursery school teacher and former girlfriend of current California Governor Gavin Newsom, at a birthday party for then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in the mid-1990s. They were first romantically linked in 1997.
The couple tied the knot on April 29, 1999, at the Bay Area home of oil family heir Gordon Getty and have been together ever since.
“It’s kindness, trust, and respect, and we have that with each other,” Don told *People* in 2024. “We’re lovers and friends and it’s fun. She’s an amazing woman.”
Marking their 26th wedding anniversary on Instagram, Kelley wrote,
“I look back on our memories that began this day 26 years ago and I would not change a DAY! You and I together have faced it all and nothing has ever stopped our bond of love. We have raised a family in a big beautiful family and never been more blessed and so we continue on together hand in hand.”
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Life has mellowed for Don since his *Miami Vice* days, when the production had to hire 24/7 security, and he couldn’t go outside without being mobbed by women eager to get close to Sonny Crockett.
“Work-life balance is an interesting thing as an actor because movies eat your life. Television shows eat your life,” Don told *People*. “Luckily, I’m at a place where I can pick and choose roles, and sometimes I often prefer the supporting role because I still get joy out of what I do, but I don’t want to work those long hours and be away from my family.”
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Don and Kelley’s first child together, Atherton Grace Johnson, was born December 28, 1999. She made occasional appearances with her parents as a child but otherwise led a regular life growing up in Santa Barbara, California, before studying photography at USC.
In 2019, Grace made her Met Gala debut alongside Dakota Johnson and walked her first runway for the Christian Cowan x *The Powerpuff Girls* show. Since then, she has modeled for Bello magazine, walked for Gucci, and appeared in a music video for her brother Jesse’s band.
“My relationship with Dakota is a mix because she is not just my sister, she is my best friend,” Grace told *Glamour Spain* in 2019 of her most famous sibling. “For a long time, regardless of the age difference, she has always treated me as an equal.”
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