During a 2016 oral history of this film in the trade publication "Variety", Jerry O'Connell said that it was not until after he had already been dating Rebecca Romijn (who would become his wife) for many months that he learned she had been a devoted fan of the movie as a child (and she wasn't the one to tell him). O'Connell said, "I'm married to Rebecca Romijn, a beautiful model. She's way out of my league, a million times out of my league. About three months into dating, my wife is from Berkeley, and I went up there to meet her high school friends. We got a little drunk and her high school best friend said to me, 'You know, "Stand by Me" is Rebecca's favorite movie of all time. You know she had posters of it all over her room growing up'. She never told me that."