Lisa Kudrow shares the secret behind 30 years of marriage with Michel Stern

Lisa Kudrow has shared insights on maintaining a strong marriage with her husband, Michel Stern, for three decades.

The Friends actress, 62, spoke exclusively with People at the season 3 premiere of The Comeback, where she walked the red carpet with Stern, an advertising executive she met in the late 1980s while he was dating her roommate. 

The couple married in 1995 and share a 27-year-old son, Julian Murray Stern, who also stars in the HBO series.

“I think that's all there is to it,” Kudrow said of the key to their long-lasting relationship. “Mutual respect for the most part. But definitely wanting to stay together and then relearning mutual respect, practicing mutual respect and listening.”

At the premiere, Kudrow shared a candid moment about working with Julian on set. “I was kind of tired, and my brain was just a little fuzzy, and I walked in and saw Julian sitting on the couch with some other people,” she recalled. 

“I just walked over, climbed onto the couch right next to him, and cuddled in. And everyone just went … and he went, ‘Hi, Mom.’ Some people didn’t know he was my son, so they were still wondering, ‘What's happening right now?’”

Kudrow has often credited meeting Stern before her rise to fame as one of the luckiest things in her life. 

“I feel like the luckiest thing that happened to me was that I met and fell in love with the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with before Friends,” she said.

Reflecting on marriage itself, Kudrow emphasized that it’s about teamwork rather than perfection. 

“We’re not promising to love each other forever… but we are promising to work on whatever problems come up,” she told Glamour in 2014. “Marriage is like being on a team. Each teammate is different, but you have the same goal.”