Rashida Jones and Ezra Koenig have a unique approach to their relationship, referring to each other as husband and wife despite not being legally married. In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Jones, 48, shared insights into why they choose to use these titles. “We’re not married,” she clarified. “We just kind of call each other that. But we are what we are, in the eyes of God!”
Jones elaborated on her perspective, influenced by her parents’ experience. Her father, producer Quincy Jones, and her late mother, model Peggy Lipton, only got married when her father had his first brain aneurysm, and her sister was six months old. The decision was driven by legal rights rather than a traditional view of marriage. “I’m sure we’ll get married at some point, but we basically are,” she added.
This isn’t the first time Jones has expressed her unconventional views on marriage. In a 2011 interview with E! News, she discussed why she might never walk down the aisle. “Marriage doesn’t really buy you anything,” she said. She cited the example of her close friend, producer Jennifer Todd, and her partner, actor Chris Messina, who are not married but have two children and are “wildly happy.” For Jones, marriage seemed like “a really big s—tty pageant of a wedding to make other people happy.”
Jones and Koenig, 40, have been together since 2016. The couple welcomed their first child, a son named Isiah, in 2018. The birth of their child marked the beginning of an emotionally intense period for Jones. In a 2021 interview with NPR, she opened up about the challenges she faced during this time. Her mother passed away from cancer in May 2019, just eight months after Isiah was born. “It was sort of like back-to-back-to-back-to-back, just wrenching, pulling my heart in all different directions,” she recalled. “I was in grief-shock.”
Jones described the profound impact of experiencing both birth and death in such close succession. “The thing that’s the craziest about birth and death is just the utter rawness of feeling,” she said. “It’s like something cracks in you. It’s very binary, both things — becoming a mother and losing my mother — like, there’s my life before and there’s my life after.”
Despite the challenges, Jones and Koenig have maintained a strong bond. Their relationship, though not legally formalized, is deeply meaningful to them. They continue to navigate their lives together, finding strength in their partnership and the family they have built.
Source: The New Yorker, E! News, NPR
