Wil and Anne Wheaton are a normal couple in their mid-40s. They have a number of charming pets whose cuddly mugs pepper their Instagram accounts and a fondness for board games and rescue animals. When Anne met Wil, she had no idea about his days as a reluctant Teen Beat heartthrob, although she remembers seeing Stand by Me in theaters. She didn't know what a Wesley Crusher was. She was a young single mom of two kids when they met, and some 20-odd years later, they've all grown up together.

They live in Los Angeles, but they're not of Los Angeles, and the sort of fame they have is borne of the rise of so-called nerd culture, social media, and honest affability. Wil's geek bona fides include his long-time presence online as a personal blogger and an eager embrace of Twitter in its nascent days, not to mention his role on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The rise of comic book culture created a perfect storm where Wil is internet famous enough to end up on The Big Bang Theory after tweeting about it, but not so famous that they're constant prey for paparazzi.

Anne is an avid advocate for animals and serves on the board of directors at the Pasadena Humane Society and SPCA; together, they raise money for assorted charities through their organization, The Foundation to Increase Awesome . Between the two of them, they have almost 4 million Twitter followers. In a word, they are #RelationshipGoals.

How did you two meet?

Wil: It was Dec. 31, 1995, and our friend Stephanie was having a New Year's Eve party that neither one of us wanted to go to. She wasn't trying to set us up. It just kind of happened that we both ended up going to this thing. I saw Anne and she was cute, and I was a nerd and I was afraid to talk to her.

Anne: About halfway through the night, our friend comes over to me and she said, "My friend Wil thinks you're cute." My New Year's resolution was no men for six months, so I didn't think anything of it. Then a few days later she invited me to go to the movies with her and her boyfriend, and she said, "Oh, my friend Wil's coming, is that OK?" I'm like, "Yeah, that's cool." And so we've been together ever since. Twenty years later.

Anne, you really didn't know Wil was a famous actor?

Anne: I didn't know who he was at all, no idea. It's funny because people just assume I was a Star Trek fan, and that's why we're together. There was a Star Trek convention in London over Easter weekend four months after we met, and he had asked me if I wanted to go with him. I was like, "Sweet, I've never been to London. What's a Star Trek convention?" It was sold out the entire time, and that was my first experience with it. It was so amazing and terrifying at the same time.

So what did you think of your first Star Trek convention?

Anne: It was a little scary because I didn't know what to expect. There were people that were waiting outside of our hotel, and following us if we were trying to go to dinner or whatever. That was scary to me ... At one point, we were at dinner, and a man walked over when Wil was eating ribs and put his baby on Wil's lap … That was jarring to me, and I just got up from the table and went and sat in the bathroom for a few minutes because I was thinking, I cannot believe we can't even just sit down and eat.

Wil: It was such a normal part of my life for all of my teens. I just took it for granted. I didn't date very much, and I had friends, but I didn't go out in public very much. I would go to my friend's house and we would play board games, and that was about it. It never even occurred to me that Anne would be like a Muggle at Hogwarts. I'm like, "Well, of course the staircases move. How do you think we get to our rooms?"

Being in love with a normal person really put a lot of how fucking weird that shit is into perspective for me, and made it OK for me to say, "You know, world, I don't belong to you. I have limits, respect them."

Courtesy of Anne and Wil Wheaton

Did you ever worry that attention from fans would be a deal breaker for Anne?

Wil: I grew up living a life where it was very normal for me to drop everything at a moment's notice to go on an audition or go to a location. That wasn't normal for Anne, and it was really challenging to find ways to balance those things … I still struggle like crazy just to get Hollywood to even acknowledge that I exist, and it was even harder back then. I just felt like, if I don't make myself available to these opportunities when they come around, they're just going go away and never come back.

Thankfully that wasn't the case.

Wil: There's a whole chapter in my book Just A Geek about that, where Anne and the kids went away for vacation, and I was going to go with them but I had auditions … They had a great time, but the auditions were terrible. They weren't just terrible in that I didn't get the jobs, but the people that I went to read for, they didn't care. They didn't care that I was there, and they shouldn't. They shouldn't care that I had sacrificed a great deal to be there — why do they give a shit about that? That's not their problem.

That was this moment of realization for me, that I was at a point where I couldn't have both. I made a choice, like, I was going to have a family or I was going to have a failing career. I couldn't have both, and I chose the family, and I started writing. It's worked out more or less.

Anne: We actually met with a therapist before we got married, and she asked us to write down in importance the things in our life. Wil wrote career first, and career was at the bottom for me. Career was at the top of his because he spent so much of his childhood working that he thought that had to be the most important thing in his life if he was going to be successful. The one clear thing I remember that she talked to us about was that. Sometimes in your life, the order of importance of those things will juggle, but if you're talking about going into this marriage, what's a priority shouldn't be the career. You need to put your oxygen mask on yourself before you help other people, and your family life and your personal relationships should come first.

Anne, what was it like for you when Wil's career was struggling?

Anne: He was 23 when I met him, so he was going back to acting and doing all his training. I didn't know what his career was like before. When he was struggling to figure out what he wanted to do, my thought was, I'm just going to work as much as I can so I can help support us while he figures out what he wants to do.

I didn't know any different, so I didn't feel like, "How come you don't have the career you had before?" I didn't start dating him or marry him because of success that he had in the past. I just met this person who was young and trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, because he had started [acting] when he was 7, and then walked away from it when he was 19. He needed to walk away from that when he did. For me, I just wanted him to find something that made him happy.

What was it like for you when he first got cast on The Big Bang Theory?

Anne: I think it started [because] Wil said something on Twitter about how funny it was.

Bill Prady and Steve Molaro, who write and produce it, asked if he'd be interested in being on an episode. I clearly remember standing in my kitchen, I was making us dinner, and he walks in and said, "The writers on Big Bang Theory want to talk to me about being on an episode," and I'm like, "What?!"

Just like that?

Anne: Half an hour later, he was on the phone with them. They had this idea of Wil playing an evil version of himself, and they wanted to know if Wil was OK with it ... It's really cute because they still get in touch with him if they need a reference on something nerdy. So that's how it first started, because he said something on Twitter about it.

We never thought of it as, "Yay! You're going to have a paycheck!" It was just like, "Oh my god, you get to do this really cool thing on a show that we love," and he was so excited. He came home, and he said, "Oh my god, they're all so nice!" He had such a great time. We just thought, what a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And then he was asked to come in again. He still gets super excited when they ask him, but I think it was probably five episodes in where he was like, "Oh my god! They like me, and they want me on this thing!"

Do you ever go on set with him?

Anne: I've only missed maybe two tapings! I went several times, then our son Ryan went with him one of the times ... I really like it too, and I love seeing how much he loves being part of that, so that's cool.

It seems like you guys have all become friends in real life too.

Anne: Yeah, they're all the nicest people, and it's so funny because the first couple of times he did some episodes, I asked Wil, "Is Sheldon [Jim Parsons] or Leonard [Johnny Galecki] as nerdy in person?" and he's like, "No, Kaley [Cuoco]'s the nerdiest of all of them!"

Anne, wearing the famous black dress Wil bought for her. Courtesy of Wil and Anne Wheaton

Anne, what's it like to go to a red carpet when you're not the "star"?

Anne: When I first met him, we went the Screen Actors Guild Awards because it was the 30th anniversary for Star Trek. I was terrified. I had my friend do my hair and my makeup. I went out and looked for a dress, and I was a single mom so I couldn't afford anything. But I found this perfect black dress that I loved and it was $400, and I couldn't afford it. My friend had told Wil, and he surprised me and bought it for me. I still have it today!

[On the red carpet] I was clutching his arm because I saw Harry Connick Jr. … I peed in the bathroom next to Lea Thompson, and that was really bizarre because I loved Back to the Future when I was in high school. I don't know how anyone does it, because I feel like no matter how you look or no matter what you say, you're going to be criticized.

Over the years, Wil, you've become more high-profile now that comic book and con culture has become so mainstream. You've become this personality that represents it. How does this affect your relationship?

Wil: There's no such thing as a single-edged sword in this particular industry. There are a lot of really terrific things; I'm creatively satisfied most of the time, and I'm able to earn enough to not worry and to help provide for our kids and hire a couple people to work with us to make our lives easier.

Anne: It makes things busier, and so it's really important for us that we still make the time for ourselves.

The Secret Life of Marrieds is a bi-weekly series of interviews with married couples about the things no one tells you about marriage. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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