Do you believe in fate?
While I do believe in some cases, I find Hollywood relationships difficult to believe. Many people wind up divorced following divorce.
However, after hearing Dustin Hoffman and his wife Lisa’s love tale, you might rethink how fate works in Hollywood.
Dustin Hoffman, 84, and Lisa Hoffman, 67, got married in 1980, but they met many years before.
According to the account, Dustin’s mother and Lisa’s grandma were close friends who saw each other frequently because they shared an apartment complex in Los Angeles.
Dustin, who originally aspired to be a classical pianist, even performed at Lisa’s parents’ wedding while her mother was pregnant.
The couple jokes that Lisa must have heard Dustin play and fallen in love with him at that point.
It wasn’t until several years later, when Dustin, then 27, found himself hanging out with a 10-year-old Lisa and her 8-year-old brother, that she realized he’d be in her life forever.
“Dustin was telling us jokes, playing the piano and encouraging me to dance around the living room. After we got together, my grandmother reminded me that later that day I had said, ‘I hope he waits for me because I want to marry him.’”
Dustin, who had been residing in New York City, would frequently come to Los Angeles to visit family and Lisa. During a visit, he and Lisa discovered they shared a connection.
She was 22 years old, and Dustin was 38.
“My grandfather had recently passed away and Dustin came to pay his condolences,” Lisa said, per the DailyMail. “That first look and I knew.”
During their first date, Dustin asked how many children Lisa wanted.
“I said six, and he said he had two already, so would four be OK. And that’s exactly the way it has played out.”
Lisa had recently started law school when the two started dating. Despite the challenges that attending school while Dustin continued his profession would present, she completed her degree.
“I knew that having a law career wouldn’t be possible once I started traveling around with Dustin, but I also knew that I needed to complete this one thing for myself,” she said.
The couple married on October 12, 1980, and Lisa graduated from law school the next year.
Three weeks after Lisa took her bar exam, the Hoffmans had their first child together.
Jake was born a month preterm and extremely ill with Hyaline membrane disease [in which a baby’s lungs require immediate treatment since they are not fully developed], so motherhood became my priority,” she explained.
And, as they discussed on their first date, they had three additional children: Rebecca (1983), Maxwell (1984), and Alexandra (1987).
As their children became older, they traversed the world, following Dustin as he filmed one film after another.
“It was important to Dustin that we were together as a family. For both of us, that was the point of being married.”
The family’s “traditional” values shaped their children’s destiny, and they now “pay their way while they pursue their careers.”
Although Dustin has had a successful career, Lisa has remained out of the spotlight. She prioritized their children as they grew up, but now that they are all adults, she is focusing on what it means to be Lisa Hoffman.
This year marks 42 years since Dustin and Lisa married, and their love for each other is as strong as ever.
“We work hard at it,” Lisa told Closer Weekly in 2017.