Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s Complete Relationship Timeline
Alison Brie and husband Dave Franco have been together for over a decade, and they just seem to fall deeper in love every year. They also seem to become greater collaborators every year, releasing movie after movie that they either co-star, co-write, or co-produce.
Here’s the full timeline of how they met, married, and formed their creative partnership.
In 2011, the soon-to-be couple was enjoying Mardi Gras in New Orleans when a mutual friend introduced them. On an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2020, Brie described the fated meet up.
“I was there with some friends,” she recalled. “It was some incredible matchmaking done by my friend Jules after we ran into Dave at the airport.”
That same stellar friend invited him to dinner.
Brie continued, “He was sitting next to her across the table, and my friend texts me under the table and was like, ‘You should hook up with Dave,’ and I responded with, ‘Yes, please’ with a lot of thumbs up emojis. A very enthusiastic response.”
Meanwhile, the friend was checking on Franco’s response to the idea.
“He was like, ‘I’m in!’” the actress said. “It was 48 hours of drugs, sex, a lot of making out.”
After the big party, Franco went back to filming a movie in New York City that would later go to Paris. She joined him for some “wining and dining” and the “romantic portion of our meeting each other.”
“He left a secret note in my sweatshirt on our last day of our trip which read, ‘Come with me to Paris,’” she said.
The couple had been dating for three months when Brie threw her boyfriend a surprise birthday party. During an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2018, he explained how it went downhill fast.
“When we first started dating, my birthday came up in the first three months of the relationship,” he said. “She started planning a surprise party, which was very sweet. But it got out of control.”
He continued, “If you know me, you know I’m a pretty private person, and I don’t like to be the center of attention, and so I freaked out and to alleviate my anxiety, I chose to consume a weed cookie. It had the opposite effect I intended. I ran downstairs and had the first panic attack of my life.”
Brie had to ask the guests to leave.
“Alison and I still talk about how if we can survive my surprise party, we can survive anything,” Franco joked.
Brie told Metro that after a year of dating, she knew he was the one.
“There was a semi-immediate click,” she said. “Probably about a year into our relationship, I was like, ‘Oh wow, this thing I thought I maybe never would do, I could definitely see myself doing it with you.’”
The pair starred in a popular Funny or Die skit about Franco’s dream girl’s name.
On Aug. 25, 2015, Brie and Franco got engaged at Big Sur, California, according to E! News. In an interview with Larry King, Brie said it took her a minute to say yes because she was so surprised.
“I was so shocked that I actually burst out laughing, and I asked him a number of times if he was being serious before saying yes,” she recalled.
It was confusing as well because he was wearing her old silver Mardi Gras mask and holding a fake ring so she could choose her own later.
On an episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden, Franco explained, “So, we go up to Big Sur, we’re on the back patio, she’s out overlooking the ocean. She turns around, I’m on one knee, I’m wearing the mask, I’m holding up the ring. And because it had been five years, she couldn’t place the mask. She didn’t know what it was.“
He added, “So, what she sees is me wearing this weird, stupid mask, holding up this janky stone ring. The entire proposal is her saying, ‘What is happening right now?’ And it’s me trying to explain how sweet it is that I kept the mask for five years.”
Brie told People, “I have an incredible fiancé. He’s so wonderful. He’s just the sweetest man I know, and he’s so funny and incredible in every way.”
In an interview with New York Post, the Community star admitted that she never imagined getting married.
“I was just like, ‘Well, that’s not my life path because I’m choosing this crazy lifestyle,’” she shared. “And then, you know, I fell in love. So, blah, blah, blah, amazing. Acting is fulfilling, but it’s also not the only thing.”
The couple was married in March 2017, according to People, in an intimate wedding ceremony. On Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Brie shared what her favorite part of the big day was.
“Probably our wedding vows because we wrote our own and didn’t know what the other person was going to say,” she said. “It’s funny to hear them out loud, and you feel like, ‘We said all the same things that we want to be for each other.’ That was very sweet.”
Franco told Entertainment Tonight, “It was great, it was really special. It was intimate, and it was really fun.”
Their first movie together, the romantic comedy The Little Hours, was released. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the two were asked what they learned while shooting. Franco joked, “We learned that Alison should not be on set while I’m having sex scenes with other women.”
Brie answered, “I left for those. I did leave for those.”
She then added, “It was so wonderful to work together. So easy, so wonderful to work with someone that you’re getting married to.”
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Franco shared how he and Brie love their cats.
“I don’t know how I became the quirky cat guy,” he said. “At one point in my life, I was the single guy with two 16-pound cats. It definitely weeds out a lot of potential dating partners. Alison loves them, thank God. She was really the only option [for marriage].”
“Something about being married made me feel so settled, almost more free, I guess, rather than trapped,” Brie told People in 2017. “It’s great, so now, let’s go do whatever we want. Onward and upward.”
The couple collaborated again and appeared in The Disaster Artist.
“It’s so nice to work with your person, to be on set with someone who is the person you feel the most comfortable with in the world,” she told Hello Giggles. “It's a really great feeling, especially to be intimate with them on set or to have romantic or kissing scenes with that person. It’s delightfully easy. He just makes a great point, and he and I talk about this all the time. We do really love working with each other.”
While talking to The Sunday Times Brie shared that she and Franco were not planning on having kids and focus their limited free time on their cats, Harry and Arturo.
“It's great because I don’t have to worry about when should I get pregnant–between seasons [of Netflix's GLOW], while we’re shooting the show—I don’t think about it every day,” the actress said. “It would be nice, but I think of all the things that would be so stressful. I think about how much we're involved in our cats’ lives. Oh my God, if it was a child!”
She also shared more about marriage, saying, “We spend time together at night. We just like to hang out. Having a really supportive partner in my life and knowing that he loves me no matter what. I’ve found my person.”
Franco and Brie walked the red carpet at the 2019 Golden Globe awards, and Franco also helped his wife when she got caught up in her Vera Wang look.
“She got her dress caught in the bush and I went in and took it out of the bush and then it became a big thing,” he explained after on the TODAY show. “I gotta look out for her.”
He added, “She put a lot of work into hair and makeup, and that dress ... We gotta make sure she’s looking perfect. She looked beautiful that night.”
Their third film together, The Rental, was a co-writing project. Franco then directed, with Brie in the lead as Michelle.
“We’ve acted together, and so we knew that we would get along well on a set, but we’ve obviously never worked together in this capacity,” he said of directing his wife. “But what I will say is that I’ve always known that she’s an amazing actress.”
“To be able to go home to her every night and have someone who would build me up and remind me that things were going well and that I was doing a good job—it was invaluable, and I honestly don’t think I could have done this without her,” he told Moviemaker Magazine.
She was super proud of him though.
“I enjoyed watching him work with everybody and seeing the crew fall in love with him because he was so collaborative and so passionate,” she told People. “His enthusiasm on set is infectious, and it made me fall in love with him all over again.”
That month, they did suffer a loss when their cat Harry passed away. Brie wrote a loving tribute to him on Instagram.
“Said goodbye to this perfect [angel] today,” she wrote. “Harry… Harold… Harrison… my sweet boy. My old man. You were quite a talker these last couple of years. Your favorite place was in my arms. And your tail was wagging till the very end. The sweetest cat that ever lived.”
When talking to People about quarantining with Franco, Brie said it brought them closer.
“Dave and I went through the first couple months in party mode, thinking we’re on vacation,” she said. “Let’s drink wine. Let’s make a lot of pasta. And then we’re like, it’s going on for longer, so let’s go into culinary experimental mode where we’re trying to make new dishes and things like that. And then we got into health mode, and then we also were in creative mode, and we were doing a lot of writing together. So, I mean, I think we feel closer than ever.”
In August 2021, the couple announced their plans for a new romantic comedy, Somebody I Used to Know, which they co-wrote during lockdown. Once again, Brie was the lead while Franco directed.
“Alison and I love romantic comedies and were inspired by the classics from the ’80s and ’90s,” Franco said in a statement.
On The Drew Barrymore Show, Brie shared the rules for how her and Franco’s marriage has lasted five years.
“The first one is respect,” she shared. “I think we respect each other, and we are so kind to each other. We really take care with the way we speak to one another on a daily basis, and it makes a big difference I think.”
They also openly share their feelings.
“Every day since [we met], I’m like, “God, I’m in love with you,’” she said. “‘I love you too.’ There’s something nice about that.”
Brie and director Jeff Baena co-wrote the comedy Spin Me Round, and she attributed the project in part to her husband, according to People, because watching him get into screenwriting was so inspiring.
“I think that was the impetus for any writing on my part—was watching Dave write The Rental with Joe Swanberg and seeing his excitement as he was trying out this new endeavor every day,” she said. She added he was “so empowered and electrified by the process” after working on The Rental.
She also told People more about how she and Franco approach filming sex scenes.
“Dave and I usually do have some kind of conversation before any job, I think just to give the other person a heads up of sort of like, ‘Oh, I have some romantic scenes in this movie,’” she said. “You don’t want to blindside anyone, I think, with that information. But at the same time, it’s a part of our job. It’s a strange part, and I can see how to the outside eye [it might come off].”
The couple visited NYC together, stopping in at Ludlow Coffee Supply, Washington Square Park, Charles Prime Rib, and Broadway.
While watching Franco direct Somebody I Used to Know, Brie was even more enthused about her man.
“He’s astonishing,” she said. “I’ve always known that he is an incredibly kind, genuine, curious person, but seeing him in action as a director and the way that he collaborates with the crew, it makes me fall in love with him every time, all over again. I know it sounds so cheesy.”
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the pair said they love collaborating.
“As actors, we would sometimes spend months apart and have very little control over when and where we would be working on other jobs,” Brie stated. “So we wanted to start making stuff together partially just to be around each other more.”
That month, they took the Couples Quiz, sharing an “error” from their first date.
"If you remember, I was 26 when we met. I just didn’t know what to do. We were late to dinner, and I was freaked out that we were late. Instead of coming up to the door, I honked on the horn,” Franco admitted.
They then shared more about meeting in New Orleans and experimenting with drugs.
“If it wasn't my first time taking Molly, it was one of the first times. And for the rest of the night, we were locked,” Franco said.
Brie responded, “Face locked. We have some photo evidence of that.”
On James Corden’s show, they answered trivia questions about one another while at risk of electric shock.
The couple walked the red carpet for the Vanity Fair Oscar party, with Brie wearing a cutout Nensi Dojaka dress. Franco was in a classic black tux by Dior.
The couple walked the picket line together at the SAG-AFTRA strike in Los Angeles with friends Jim Rash and Nat Faxon.
Brie also celebrated the birthday of the “love of my life.”
Brie and Franco announce another movie, this time a horror flick about co-dependancy called Together.
The couple attended Sundance in early January 2025, kicking off their promotional tour for their new horror film, Together. On January 22, Vanity Fair shared stills from the movie, in which Franco and Brie play the central couple, Tim and Millie.
The film is about a couple going through a rough patch who decide to get away to an isolated location to reconnect. There, they encounter an ancient evil that quickly ramps up their relationship issues.
In an interview about the project, Brie reflected on how the film explores codependency in love, sharing, “It’s easy for us to relate to this main idea that people can lose their identity in a relationship. When you’ve been with someone for a really long time, sometimes it’s difficult to tell where your personality ends and your partner’s begins.”
elle
