At their recent reunion, the stars of Friends showed their millions of devoted fans that they really will always be there for each other. "Over the years we've all struggled with different obstacles and challenges," David Schwimmer revealed to People ahead of the May 27 special. "And I think in those times it's been nice to be able to reach out and touch base and have a call."
But when the rain truly starts to pour he, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry have a whole cast of characters that they can not only face the day with, but make it through all the rest with, too.
When it comes to romance, some of them have truly found their lobster (Kudrow and husband Michel Stern recently celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary!) while others are on a break from the whole dating scene.
And some may just be in the process of reigniting old flames...
Because one of the more surprising—and delightful!—revelations to come out of the HBO Max get-together was that Schwimmer and Aniston were almost a real life Ross-and-Rachel.
"Honestly, I remember saying one time to David, 'It's going to be such a bummer if the first time you and I actually kiss is going to be on national television,'" Aniston shared on the special of their mutual crushes. "And sure enough, the first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. So, we just channeled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel."
Say it with us now, "Oh. My. Gawwwwwwd."
While that two-and-a-half-decades-old crush might very well have faded, we can still dream that they're not completely over it. (Because that, my friend, is what they call closure. Sorry. Had to.) As for the rest of the Friends cast's love lives, here's what we know they know we know.
Okay, fine. While she's happy to party like it's 2004 with her Friends crew, she's not actually getting back together with her early aughts love, Brad Pitt. (Though, at this point, we're pretty sure the onetime golden couple enjoy getting a rise out of us each time they reunite.) The Morning Show star has said she's happily single following her split from ex-husband Justin Theroux, rebuffing an offer from Howard Stern to fix her up on a blind date. "I just don't like being set up," she explained. "I don't like it. Hate it."
And while we're certain she's living her best life ever with a circle of fiercely loyal friends and a crew happy to join her in Mexico for all-you-can-drink-skinny-margaritas, that doesn't stop us from hoping that maybe David Schwimmer truly is the Ross to her Rachel.
With Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid, the actress has found the person she'd happily lie with and just forget the world. In the eight years since mutual pal Ed Sheeran set them up, the two have navigated a called-off engagement, a subsequent reconciliation ("We broke off our engagement, and he moved to England, then we got back together, and it's actually better than it was before," Cox explained during a 2016 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show) and months apart due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Through it all, the mom to nearly 17-year-old Coco (with ex-husband David Arquette) swears the Irish musician is "my guy, he's my one."
When The Comeback star met her lobster in France-bred advertising exec Michel Stern, there were some very sitcom-like complications. "I was living with a French girl and he had just moved here and they were dating when we first met," she said in a 2005 interview, according to The Daily Mail. "But I'm freakishly polite, so I saw him and went, 'Well, he's the perfect man and it's all ruined because now they're together.'"
Six years after that two-and-half-month romance ended, "I met him again at her birthday party and we just never stopped," she continued. The pair, now parents to 23-year-old University of Southern California grad Julian, wed on May 27, 1995, a week after the first season of Friends wrapped, which means they celebrated their 26th anniversary on the night Friends: The Reunion dropped.
How's he doin'? Well, since 2016, the Episodes Golden Globe winner, who shares 16-year-old daughter Marina with ex-wife Melissa McKnight, has been dating Irish television producer Aurora Mulligan. The pair turned up to the 2018 premiere of BBC's Top Gear together (she's an executive producer on the race car-centric series, he co-hosted it from 2016 to 2019), but have otherwise kept their relationship largely private. So we're just going to assume it's a love based on giving and receiving, as well as having and sharing.
Seven months after announcing his engagement to literary agent Molly Hurwitz ("I decided to get engaged. Luckily, I happened to be dating the greatest woman on the face of the planet at this time," he told People), The Odd Couple alum released a statement June 1 revealing they had ended their three-year relationship. And, truly, could it be any more cordial?
Perry, who ended a six-year romance with Lizzy Caplan in 2012, told E! News, "Sometimes things just don't work out, and this is one of them. I wish Molly the best."
He and wife Zoe Buckman filed to end their seven-year marriage in 2017 months after revealing that they were on a break. (The pair, whose meet-cute took place at a London bar in 2007, share 10-year-old daughter Cleo.)
And his single status only adds fuel to our Ross-and-Rachel fantasies. "At some point, we were both crushing hard on each other, but it was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship, and we never crossed that boundary," Schwimmer explained during the reunion of why he and Aniston never got together. "We respected that." But now that they're both otherwise unencumbered, perhaps they'd like to grab a cup of coffee?