More than thirty years after getting married (perhaps jestingly) on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves have admitted that they still refer to one another as husband and wife in text messages. Coppola directed the couple in a legally valid wedding sequence for the 1992 movie, which Ryder has long maintained happened in real life.
In a recent interview with Josh Horowitz for his podcast Happy Sad Confused, Ryder stated that she and Reeves continue to engage in regular text communication. “We always say who it is, even though it says it on the text. So like on his birthday I go: ‘Happy birthday, my husband,’” she said. “And then he’s like, ‘Hey, my wife, I love you. KR 57.’ Like on each birthday he’s like KR 57 or whatever his age is. He’s always done that.”
When Ryder and Reeves were on a promotional tour for their 2018 movie, Destination Wedding, she informed reporters that they were still legally wed. “We actually got married in Dracula,” Ryder told Entertainment Weekly at the time,“No, I swear to God, I think we’re married in real life.” “In that scene, Francis [Ford Coppola] used a real Romanian priest,” she added. “We shot the master and he did the whole thing. So I think we’re married.”
“In a sense when we were all done, we realized that Keanu and Winona really are married as a result of this scene and this ceremony,” Coppola said in response to The Guardian in the same year. “We did a whole take of a marriage ceremony with real priests,” Reeves said to Esquire outlet in 2021. “Winona says we are. Coppola says we are. So I guess we’re married under the eyes of God.”