Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi’s Romance Is a Love Song

Millie Bobby Brown Marries Jake Bongiovi in Private Ceremony

Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi may have met in the most Gen Z of ways, but their courtship quickly took a turn for the old-fashioned.

After connecting on Instagram in 2021, “we were friends for a bit,” Millie shared in a November 2022 Wired interview. “And then, what can I say?”

Well, a lot more would’ve been welcome, especially since the Stranger Things star got engaged to Jon Bon Jovi‘s model son barely five months later, but that’s where Millie left it at the time. 

The 20-year-old actress and 22-year-old model have since filled in more blanks: DMing led to FaceTiming, and that led to finally meeting in person, with Jake extending the ancient chivalrous gesture of picking Millie up from the airport.

“bff <3," Jake captioned a June 3, 2021, photo of them, quite possibly having just left an arrival terminal.

And three years later, they’re married! The couple reportedly exchanged vows in a private ceremony last weekend, though they’ve been hinting at a bigger celebration to come.

Who says you can’t just know?

“You can’t pinpoint why,” Millie said. “It’s just the feeling of knowing that that’s the person you want to spend the rest of your time with. I think so much of life is overthinking. The one thing that made clear sense to me was him.”

Not that she showed up wearing her heart on her sleeve, mind you.

“You were playing it cool, like, ‘whatever,'” Jake reminisced about their first meeting as he did Millie’s makeup in a video for her beauty line Florence by Mills, the pair dissolving into giggles as he attempted various feats of application.

At the airport, he recalled being “taken aback” initially. Having only had screen time with her before, Jake explained, “You don’t have a gauge for the physical person because you’re only talking to this.” He framed his face with his hands. “So, you were just a floating head for awhile.”

But soon enough, she meant the world to him, their initial meet-up turning into a full-on rom-com’s worth of sweet moments, from having coffee on a brisk November day in New York to checking out the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center to—it was only a matter of time—kicking off 2022 spending time in Millie’s native England (despite being born in Spain, where her father was working at the time).

The couple made their red carpet debut at the 2022 BAFTA Film Awards in March. Two months later Jake accompanied Millie to the Stranger Things season four premiere, captioning a pic from the evening, “Congratulations babe u deserve the world love you.”

“My parents adore him,” Millie told The Times last summer. “[We] both come from parents that have stayed together for a really long time. My parents were young when they got together, so I always had amazing role models for relationships.”

On Jake’s end, dad Jon and mom Dorothea Hurley were high school sweethearts and celebrated 35 years of marriage April 29.

“Millie is wonderful,” Jon said in May, telling Andy Cohen, “Her whole family is great, really great. Jake is very, very happy.”

Asked if he thought the couple were a little young to get engaged, Jon said he didn’t think age was what truly mattered.

But though her father-in-law’s band literally has a track called “Wedding Day,” Millie said that she and Jake weren’t going to make the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer be the entertainment at their reception.

“I feel like that’s asking me to go and do a full-on play for everyone,” Millie explained to Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb on TODAY in September. “He needs a break.”

While that certainly doesn’t preclude a heartfelt performance for the newlyweds when they do celebrate with family and friends, should Jon be so inclined, the bride wasn’t worried about that detail—or any detail. 

“It has not been stressful at all for me,” Millie said of wedding planning. “Jake is very involved, he’s very helpful during the whole process. I’ve never felt alone in it, which I think is really nice…But ultimately it’s just a very intimate day for the both of us and we’re really both very excited.”

The couple didn’t say when exactly they’d join hands and vow to make it, they swear, but they were more than halfway there.

This year they paid tribute to each other on Valentine’s Day and were spotted strolling in Manhattan, their rom-com turning into an epic.

And Jake wasn’t lying when, while wishing his “beautiful fiancée” a happy 20th birthday Feb. 19, he promised, “Big year ahead.”

More life-affirming highlights from Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi’s romance are just ahead, so keep swooning, er, reading: