The Great White Day
An engaged Carrie Bradshaw may have had cold feet on Sex and the City, but Sarah Jessica Parker had no trouble saying ”I do” when TV’s current poster girl for singlehood married longtime love Matthew Broderick on May 19, 1997.
Just days before the New York City nuptials, Broderick, who met Parker in 1991 while directing her brother Toby in an Off Broadway play, had denied the matrimonial rumors. ”These stories come in waves,” the actor told the press. ”I’d think people would be bored of them by now. They’re never true.”
The wedding was such a secret that even some of the couple’s guests thought they were merely attending a party. But plans had been quietly in the works for months. How else could the Ferris Bueller star, then 35, have the day off from shooting Godzilla and his 32-year-old Broadway baby be sprung from her nightly romp in Once Upon a Mattress? But there was no honeymoon in Vegas, or anywhere else, as both were back on the job soon after.
Broderick’s sister Janet Craft, an Episcopal minister, presided over the ceremony, while bandleader Peter Duchin provided the music. Cast members from the pair’s 1996 turn in Broadway’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, along with pals Ron Rifkin and Bruno Kirby, entertained family and friends with show tunes. ”Everybody was having such a blast and wanted to serenade them,” Duchin recalls. As for the couple, he says, ”They’re extremely close and thoughtful of each other. It was easy to see they’re really together.”
Not everyone thought so. No showbiz marriage is without its share of public scrutiny and theirs came at the 2001 Golden Globe awards when Parker, a best actress winner for her Sex role, neglected to thank her husband in her acceptance speech. Tongues began to wag that there was trouble brewing as the busy pair focused on their careers. Broderick became the quintessential Leo Bloom in Broadway’s The Producers and is now filming The Music Man for ABC, while Parker is shooting her fifth season of Sex and the City. But in April, it was announced that the duo was collaborating on another production: their first child, who is due in the fall. If that isn’t enough to defuse gossip columnists, the notoriously private Parker offered one interviewer final proof. ”My marriage speaks for itself,” she said. ”Come see me in 25, 30 years when I am still married to the same man.”