Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard have one of the most enduring, if not saccharine marriages in all of Hollywood. The couple first began dating in 2007, were married in 2013, and have since gone on to have two children together.
However, on the latest episode of Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, the 47-year-old learned that his good lady wife dodged a bullet — or whatever the opposite of dodging a bullet is — with his guest, Full House star John Stamos.
“I was freshly divorced — there was some award show or party or after-party or something, and my press agent, Lewis K., says, ‘There’s this girl that wants to meet you. You gotta meet her. She’s into theater, she’s fun, you guys will be great together,'” Stamos recalled. “It was Kristen.”
This elicited a gasp from Shepard, who exclaimed, “Oh, no kidding!” as this was apparently news to him.
Stamos and his first wife, model Rebecca Romijn, married in 1998 and finalized their divorce in 2005. At the time, Bell, 42, would have been in her mid-20s and Stamos would have been in his early 40s. So, his hesitancy was certainly understandable, not to mention honorable.
“So I said, she’s so adorable, she’s so great, I am way the f*ck too old,” the 59-year-old continued. “I was just so lofty and thought, I’m old — I don’t know how old she is”
“She’s five years younger than me, so she’d be 17 years younger than you. So that would be less than your current gal,” Shepard remarked of Stamos’s current wife, 36-year-old actress and model Caitlin McHugh.
When Shepard floated the idea that Stamos perhaps found the age gap to be “gross” and “not a good look,” he quipped, “Yeah, but I think I got over that.”
Speaking of getting over things, it sounds like Shepard has a good sense of humor about the whole thing, because really — who wants to hear that they were second choice to John freaking Stamos. But perhaps a little head’s up would have been nice on Bell’s part.