Sterling K. Brown and Ryan Michelle Bathe are both powerhouses in their own right. Brown is a Golden Globe and Emmy winner who is nominated for his very first Oscar, while Bathe is an accomplished actress who has appeared in hit shows like “The First Wives Club” and “All Rise.” Together, however, they are a true force.
The couple, who are both from St. Louis, are college sweethearts who met as freshman at Stanford University in the ‘90s. They eloped in 2006, threw a big wedding celebration in 2007, and became parents in the years that followed, welcoming two sons Andrew and Amaré. Along the way, they took over Hollywood, building their acting careers from the ground up and showing their love to the world in acclaimed docu-series “Black Love.” Now, Brown is an official Academy Award nominee, having been nominated for his standout performance in “American Fiction.”
In celebration of Brown’s Oscar nomination, we are taking a look back at his and Bathe’s iconic Black Love moments. Keep reading to see all the times Brown and Bathe shared their love story.
Relationship Beginnings
While appearing on “Black Love” Season 2, Brown and Bathe opened up about their relationship beginnings. The “This Is Us” actor revealed that the two became best friends during college and he started acting weird and doing odd things — like stealing her bike — before telling her he loved her. Bathe promptly said “okay” to his love confession, sharing in the episode that she thought it was “creepy.”
“I had no game,” Brown joked.
Brown expanded on how they initially got together while appearing on “Black Love Live”: “I don’t think I’d ever felt this before, like honestly. I’m an individual who has developed some polish over time, but 18, 19-year-old Sterling had [zero] game. I did not know how to talk to her. I would get tongue-tied and nervous, but I’d go in the bathroom in the mirror like, “‘You gotta tell her.’”
He went on to share how she wasn’t interested at first because he approached in a “very strange way.” “I had to stop talking to her because I loved her so much,” Brown said. “I couldn’t stand to just be her friend.” So sweet!
Their First Kiss
Luckily, after Brown’s awkward love faux pas, the two continued to be friends. Brown and Bathe, who were drama students at Stanford, were working on a scene together from “War of the Roses” when they shared their first kiss.
“We had to transcribe the scene from the movie to the paper so we could work on it,” Brown explained during “Black Love” season two. “She came into my dorm room. Now, she’ll dispute this fact that I’m about to say. She comes to my dorm room in booty shorts.”
“So I’m like ‘oh, this is a sign,’ right?’” Brown added with a laugh. Bathe clarified that she never wore “booty shorts.”
“I got them from Ann Taylor. Ann Taylor does not sell booty shorts,” she claimed.
“So we’re working on the scene,” Brown continued. “At one point in time, we’re sitting on the bed. We’re looking at each other; she’s looking at me. I leaned over and I kissed her. It ended [with] her crying and us hugging.” The rest, as they say, is history.
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Navigating Family
Brown and Bathe’s relationship wasn’t always smooth sailing, however. Bathe’s mother and grandmother were not fans of Brown. Her family called her and told her they had a vision that he was “a horrible person and evil,” and Bathe should be “deathly afraid of him.”
“They basically gave me a full court press. It was terrifying,” she shared on a season two episode of “Black Love.”
“Her mom’s influence; her grandmother — these are the two most important people in her life,” Brown added. “Her grandmother passed away before we got married. If her grandmother were still alive, it probably would not have happened.”
Bathe further explained her family’s impact on their relationship during an appearance on “Black Love Live,” saying, “I knew my family had been a factor in why we had broken up in the past. My inability to trust myself and to trust that this was something real. The first 18 months of our marriage I had to really work because my initial gut reaction, if anything negative happened, it was seen through the prism of “my mother was right.’”
“It was tough,” Brown said. “Everybody comes to marriage with their ideas or their preconceived notions of what marriage is supposed to be. Sometimes they’re conscious, sometimes they’re unconscious. You together, over time, sort of figure out what this marriage is for us.”
The Beauty of Home Birth
The couple overcame Bathe’s family concerns in their marriage and then created a family of their own. Brown and Bathe had two natural childbirths and welcomed their first son, Andrew, and second son, Amaré, at home in their bedroom.
“We knew we wanted to have natural childbirth each time,” Brown said during season 1 of “Doula Dads.” The actor went on to explain that the couple chose home births after watching the documentary ‘The Business of Being Born.’”
“[Ryan] said, “I would love to have my babies naturally. I think my body is meant for this.’ I said, ‘I support you.’ What I wasn’t prepared for was the level of strong opinions of people who thought we were cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.” The couple went to a birthing center, took birthing classes, and found a midwife.
“What I love about the midwifery practice is that there’s something very…whole person about it. They ask how you’ve been eating, how you’ve been drinking, have you been exercising. It put Ryan at ease in a way her OB-GYN, himself, could not.”
For their first child, Ryan went into labor in their bedroom and began “walking on all fours” across the room, Brown said. Brown then called the midwife and she guided him through the entire birth. Brown gushed that their son, Andrew, started crying as soon as he was born and Brown placed the baby on Bathe’s chest. The midwife and doula arrived minutes later and helped the couple with their post-birth experience.
“I’m very happy and privileged that that was our story,” Brown added. Beautiful!
The Importance of Healthy Examples
While delivering a speech as keynote speakers for the 2020 Black Love Summit, both Brown and Bathe dished on the importance of having healthy examples of a loving relationship.
“I do think that there are so many people out there that get a lot out of having these conversations,” Bathe said. “I don’t know that — even in popular culture — we had the most healthy examples of what relationships were supposed to be. There was that sense of like, ‘it’s gonna be hard to find a man.’ Growing up, I felt like the narrative I was told around relationships was ‘you probably won’t even have one. So we’re not going to even have a conversation about how to have a healthy one, because girl, ain’t no Black men out there.’”
“It’s interesting because you begin to sort of model that, you know,” she continued. “Then, you hear the statistics. You know, ‘it’s seven women to every half a man!’ We are all figuring it out. You’re definitely going to have your ‘Love Jones’ moments.”
The exact type of encouragement we all need. Congratulations Sterling K. Brown and Ryan Michelle Bathe!
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