The Secrets of Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's Epic Love Story

And Shepard, 50, roots for his wife right back, Bell relaying on eTalk in October 2024 that he took her steamy chemistry with Nobody Wants This costar Adam Brody in stride.

“Even I can acknowledge watching it, like, ‘Whoa, that’s hot,'" she said. "My husband said the same thing. Like, watching the first episode he was like, ‘Oh my god, I want you to kiss him so badly.’”

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But after about two months of dating, Shepard broke up with her.

"We were on the road to something serious," Bell recalled to Rosenbaum, "and he said, 'I want to be very responsible with you because I really respect you. I'm still dating other people.'"

"In retrospect I realize how respectful that was, even though it broke my heart at the time," she added. "He wasn't going to continue to sort of date me like a real relationship and then have other dates on the side."

She was admittedly "devastated," but woke up the next day determined to keep having a good time as a single gal.

Four days later, Shepard called and said he'd made a mistake.

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Talking to Harry Connick Jr. on Harry in September 2017, Bell admitted that her fighting style used to be suspect. "When we first met," she said, "we fell madly in love and I love the dramatic exit. There is nothing I crave more."

"We'd fight a lot," Bell explained, "and I'd yell something and then slam the bedroom door, then I'd slam the front door, then I'd get in my car and then I'd skid out the driveway and I would sit around the corner in my car and it felt so good—and I realized how incredibly toxic it was only after he pointed it out.

"Three months into our relationship he was like, 'You can't leave anymore during fights. I'm not going to do that.' I was like, 'What?' He's like, 'You can't do that.'"

Shepard "has a very high standard and a strong code of ethics," Bell said. "He was like, 'No, I have more respect for myself. I love you but I'm not going to do that my whole life.'"

But while Bell agreed not to peel away from a fight, she still had to come to terms with sharing Shepard with the other love of his life—his 1967 Lincoln Continental.

"Lady Lincoln," Bell told Clever Movies while promoting their 2012 film Hit and Run. "She's been in Dax's life for 12 years. I have respect for the females that are my alphas, and ahead of me. I love her."

"She's your sister wife," Shepard interjected. "She is my sister wife," Bell agreed. "And I'm fine being a sister wife. We have a great relationship."

In 2018, Bell estimated they had logged about 20,000 miles on road trips—but their respective travel styles were also something they had to hash out early on in the relationship. For instance, Shepard wanted to tow his Polaris RZR with them everywhere they went, even when he had no plans to use it.

"My one daughter has a Lambie, my other daughter has a blanket, my husband has a thousand-pound off-road vehicle," Bell quipped on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "And I...you know, have my vape pen." 

The couple first got engaged in 2009, but then announced their intent to tie the knot only after same-sex marriage was legal throughout the U.S.

Proposition 8, rescinding the right in California, had just passed in 2008. Shepard noted that they had many gay friends and "it would not be nice to dunk on our friends."

Bell told CNN, "We're not going to have a party when half of our friends…can't do that thing we're doing. We're not going to ask them to come celebrate a right they don't have. That's just tacky!"

So the couple enjoyed a long engagement, welcoming daughter Lincoln Bell Shepard on March 23, 2013. Three months later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, paving the way for legal same-sex marriage in all 50 states—and Bell re-proposed that day.

They still didn't make a spectacle of their nuptials, swapping vows at a courthouse with only a few witnesses in attendance.

Daughter Delta Bell Shepard was born Dec. 19, 2014—Dax having paved the way for her name when he surprised Kristen one night by coming home with a bell inked on his ring finger with a "K," an "L" and a "D," even though Delta hadn't arrived yet.

Bell told Collider in 2010 that she was a workaholic, "but I think your significant other should be way more important than your work."

And she doesn't care who knows it or what people think of such an arrangement.

"I would do everything together," Bell told Moviefone in March 2017. "I'm not sitting in the audience of my life. I'm not watching how I'm being perceived, I'm not tracking how I'm being perceived. I don't really care. I care if I wake up happy and I go to bed happy. So I could try to keep tabs on this idea of who people think I am, or where they think I fit, but it's all so meaningless, and it changes with the wind. I just care much more about being happy on a day-to-day basis, so I want to be with and work with my husband."

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On Valentine's Day in 2018, Bell offered up a handwritten primer that, as "an old married woman," she felt might be beneficial to share.

Remaining vulnerable with your partner, appreciating the privilege of having a partner, remembering to take time for yourself and remaining open to new ways of addressing problems when they inevitably crop up are some of the imperatives she listed that have worked for her and Shepard. 

Meanwhile, she knows that they're in the spotlight, both as celebrities and as a #goals-inspiring couple. And admittedly she does feel pressure at times to not let anyone who's rooting for them down.

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