India — Valentine’s Day is a special day for couples in love, across the world, even celebrity couples. As much as we try to deny it, there is something about starry love stories that is instantly attractive. Every time a celebrity ties the knot or announces an engagement, it’s a moment of celebration not just for them but also for their millions of fans.
This Valentine’s Day, we are bringing you stories of celebrity meet-cutes and let us tell you, these stories are no less exciting than some Bollywood rom-coms themselves. Whether it is searching for your miffed girlfriend in an unknown city or finding love on the sets of one’s movie, there are stories of all kinds here. Check them out:
Shah Rukh Khan-Gauri Khan
One of Bollywood’s most loved and strongest couples, Gauri and Shah Rukh also have a beautiful love story. The two met at a party when they were teenagers. They were sitting by the poolside, sipping cola, when Cupid struck. When he finally got her number, he would call her up at her house, pretending to be her friend ‘Shaheen’.
However, as charming as he is now, Shah Rukh wasn’t always the perfect partner. Fed up with his possessiveness, Gauri decided to break up with him and left for Mumbai. A heartbroken Shah Rukh followed her there, looking for her at every Mumbai beach when he finally found her at the last one he went to. She soon forgave him and they got married in 1991. The couple has three kids now –Aryan, Suhana and AbRam.
Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna
Talking about how her love story with Akshay began, Twinkle revealed on Koffee With Karan that she had just come out of a long-term relationship and wanted to have a fling for the first time in her life. “There he was, six feet of chocolate ice-cream. So, I decided that I am going to have a fling with him and it is going to last for 15 days (the length of their outdoor schedule). That was my plan. I ran out of books in Calgary, there was no TV and I was really bored. And there he was. It was kind of perfect,” she revealed.
Akshay and Twinkle have two children – a son named Aarav, born in 2002, and a daughter named Nitara, who was born in 2012.
Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput
Mira met Shahid for the first time when she was just 16. When asked what it was like, she told her followers, “Just like meeting anyone for the first time. Interesting. It was actually when I was 16 and we were at a common family friends house for a concert by a Sufi singer. Both our dads love that kind of music.”
But Cupid had struck so hard, they met just three-four times before tying the knot in an intimate home wedding in Delhi. The couple now has two kids–daughter Misha and son Zain.
Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan
Kareena and Saif had fallen in love on the sets of Tashan and went on to tie the knot four years later. Kareena had opened up about in her Humans of Bombay post, “I’d met him before, but while we were filming Tashan, something changed. I wore my heart on my sleeve! He was so charming; I fell for him hook, line & sinker. I remember while shooting in Ladakh & Jaisalmer, we’d go on long bike rides for some alone time. We’d enjoy the beauty, have great conversations & just bond!” She said Saif “helped me heal and love myself”.
Saif also broached the subject of marriage during Tashan shoot. Kareena said that she had said no, saying “that I don’t know you”. The actor maintains that she didn’t turn down Saif but meant that she needs to know him better. Saif had then proposed to Kareena twice on their trip to Paris – once at a bar and again at the Notre Dame Church. Saif had chosen the same city where his cricketer father Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi had proposed to his actor mother Sharmila Tagore. She finally agreed. The couple are now parents to son Taimur and awaiting the arrival of their second child together.
Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas
Nick said he met Priyanka through a friend. The initial introduction led to the two texting each other but they didn’t actually meet till May 2017 when they attended the Met Gala together. While Jonas said the two “had a great time,” he also insisted they went only as friends. “Our lives were kind of taking us in different places,” he told Jimmy Kimmel during an interview.
Over the next few weeks while the media questioned them about a budding romance, Nick said he and Priyanka were just friends. “People would ask us, in interview settings and in private, ‘Are you guys seeing each other?’ And the answer was no. People thought we were being coy, and so did we, until we cut to, now we’re engaged, so the story sort of wrote itself. We then met up a couple of months ago, five months ago now, and it was kind of immediate. We just knew it was right and jumped right in.”
Priyanka and Nick got married in Jodhpur in 2018. His entire family flew down to India for the festivities that last almost an entire week.
Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh
In an interview with Filmfare, Deepika said that she had serious trust issues when she first met Ranveer, and even though she liked him, she didn’t want to fully commit. “It was not about him. It was about whether I was ready to commit to a relationship. Because I’d been in several relationships before and many times my trust was broken. When I met Ranveer, I was exhausted,” she said. “When this relationship, which I was in ended in 2012, I was like I’m done. I wanted to try out this concept of casual dating. I just did not want to be answerable to anyone. When Ranveer and I met in 2012, I told him, ‘I realise there’s a connection between us. I really like you but I want to keep it open. I don’t want to commit. If I get attracted to different people I’m going to do my thing,'” Deepika added.
Ranveer said something similar in an interview to Filmfare as well. “There was a phase in my life where I was only in no-strings-attached relationships. I’d cut off any string that I’d see. But yeah, you change and evolve as a person. You crave something more substantial. Now I can’t even think of such relationships. My biological clock is ticking. I want to become a family man. I love kids,” he said.