Keeping their love on the DL! Julia Stiles and her husband, Preston Cook, have ensured that their relationship was private for nearly a decade.
The actress and the camera assistant began dating in 2014 after meeting on the set of her film Blackway. They quietly got engaged in December 2015, with Stiles later gushing about the romantic proposal.
“It was a total surprise,” she said during a July 2016 appearance on Live With Kelly! “Mostly because I talked myself out of it.”
Stiles hoped that an engagement was imminent, but she did not want to let her expectations disrupt her time with Cook over the holidays. “We went on a trip to Colombia with his entire family over Christmas and New Year’s,” she explained. “So, because I’m a lady, I was like, ‘Do not ruin a perfectly good vacation by getting your hopes up. Just let it go. Be in the present moment.’”
However, the former actor tipped off the 10 Things I Hate About You star prior to popping the question. “We had had a conversation waiting for an elevator one day, where he was randomly like, out of nowhere, ‘With jewelry, you don’t really wear silver or platinum. You’re more into gold,’” she recalled. “And then I went, ‘What is up with this conversation?’”
Stiles raved over her then-fiancé at the time. “Overall, I’m so happy,” she said. “I’m so in love. Life is great. … It was a full moon. We were on a tropical island and he’s a really good man. I found it!”
The couple continued to work together as their romance became more serious. He was a crew member on her 2016 movie Jason Bourne and her series Riviera, which ran from 2017 to 2020.
“We were so lucky because you often don’t get to [work together], and if you’re away from each other it can be hard on your relationship,” Stiles said in the July 2017 issue of Marie Claire UK of collaborating with Cook on Riviera. “[When I got the part] I panicked and thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to be away for seven months.’ But they hired him because he has a great resume and they needed someone bilingual. It turned into the most romantic experience ever.”
The pair tied the knot in September 2017 and went on to welcome two children: Strummer and Arlo.
Scroll through the gallery below to revisit their relationship timeline.