Stronger Together

Let's be real: No couple reaches their 10-, 15-, or 50-year anniversary without a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and protein smoothies. But the dedicated, loving, and downright adorable duos who do make it? They have one thing in common: They've figured out a shared strength (or two) that cements them for the long haul.

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THEIR SUPERPOWER: Growing in Tandem

Gabby Reece & Laird Hamilton Former pro beach volleyball player; big-wave surfer

Gabrielle Reece and Laird Hamilton are sun-kissed and shredded. Peering into their decades-long relationship is satisfying, like finding out that a couple in an ad is actually happily married.

"Did you know our marriage is decades?" Gabby, 55, asks Laird, 61, when he joins the interview.

"I didn't," he says, pulling in a chair. "'Decades.' It sounds like a card game."

Both of them have spent a disproportionate percentage of their adult lives in interviews, and they speak comfortably. Gabby is a former professional beach volleyball player, model, and television host. She runs a high-intensity training program called HighX and interviews health and fitness notables on her podcast, The Gabby Reece Show. Laird is a legendary big-wave surfer who coinvented the tow-in surfing technique, in which a Jet Ski flings a surfer into stories-high waves. Together the two created the training program XPT and Laird Superfood (with entrepreneur Paul Hodge), which offers a line of functional and prebiotic food products; the company grew from a concoction of plant-based fats that Laird was adding to his coffee every day.

The couple met in 1995, when Gabby traveled to Maui to interview Laird for an episode of a show she hosted then, The Extremists. Neither of them was looking for love. Gabby was in a relationship. Laird was married. Both of them are the person your partner worries daily that you'll meet and fall for, which is exactly what happened. At some point between Gabby interviewing Laird and the two tandem-surfing together, something clicked, and a week later, he moved to California to live with her.