Mandy Patinkin & His Wife Kathryn: Their Love Story

With 44 years together — and 43 years married — actor Mandy Patinkin and writer Kathryn Grody make up one of the most stable couples in Hollywood. Here, we're taking a look at the love story of the Criminal Minds star and his wife while also showing you their most adorable photos through the years. Enjoy!

The year was 1978. Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody were two young actors working with the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York. A year earlier, Patinkin had dated another of his co-stars and experienced heartbreak, after which he decided to never again date someone he shared the stage with.

Despite Patinkin's new rule, he found Kathryn Grody irresistible. At the end of their theatre show, Mandy Patinkin asked his former co-star out. He met her on a Sunday at the now-defunct Black Sheep Tavern between Washington and 11th Street in New York City.

Mandy came to meet Kathryn carrying a camera and yellow chrysanthemums that he'd cut from the street. When he saw Kathryn, the actor gave her the flowers and told her, "I'm going to marry you." Before she could react, Patinkin snapped a picture. 

Speaking to Vulture in 2018, Grody recalled her reaction to Patinkin's daring move, having told him: "I said he was going to get very hurt, because I wasn't going to marry anybody. Because I didn't believe in [marriage]."

The afternoon went better than planned, so much so that Grody began to question her own views on marriage.

"What changed my mind was the first kiss on the corner — and walking along the pier, crying," she said in 2018. Patinkin explained, "We were crying about common connections. She had lost her parents six months apart. I had lost my father about the same time her two parents died. And then we had a million other things. It was a profound day."

In addition to the connection on the date, there was a shared quality that caught both Mandy and Kathryn's attention: the inability to see a life without the one another.

"He said the only thing that frightened him more than having a relationship was losing one with me," Grody recounted to Vulture. In the end, she agreed to go out on another date with Patinkin.

The new couple's date became an invitation to go to the movies the next week, when they continued to bond and charm one another. A year later, Patinkin and Grody were engaged.

On June 15, 1980, Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody walked down the aisle and vowed eternal love, a promise they have managed to keep to this day—over 40 years later.

Over the next four decades, Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody have not only raised a family, but they also have become supportive of one another's career.

Grody, for example, joined Patinkin in some of his films and walked hand in hand with him when he became a better-known star in Hollywood.

Patinkin, for his part, has always been a strong supporter of his wife's career. She also gained acclaim in the Off-Broadway scene thanks to her play, Mom's Life, released in 1990.

"For me, there is no way of feeling the depth of staying together for 40 years," Grody said in 2018. "You share it, you’ve created a common history."

"I never experienced unconditional love until I met her," Patinkin added, with Vulture noting the actor teared up when he shared that.