These Are The Virgin River Cast's Actual Partners

As with any popular show, fans of Netflix's hit series "Virgin River" have their favorite couple — the one that they root for amidst all the drama and love triangles. Probably the most passionate are the Mel/Jack shippers, who have patiently — or perhaps not so patiently — waited for the central relationship between widowed nurse practitioner Melinda "Mel" Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge) and bar owner and ex-Marine Jack Sheridan (Martin Henderson) to finally take off after four seasons.

Whenever a TV couple has sizzling chemistry like Mel and Jack, some fans even begin to ship the actors in real life as well. However, Breckenridge and Henderson are just good friends outside of the show, with Breckenridge being happily married with two children. And while most of the relationships on "Virgin River" may be on-again, off-again or full of twists and turns, many of the stars of the show actually have very sweet and wholesome love stories off screen.

While there are rumors that Martin Henderson is dating a fellow New Zealander, he would not confirm the relationship in a 2022 interview with NZ Herald. When the star was in a relationship with his now-ex, model Aisha Mendez, he kept mostly quiet. Henderson first made their relationship public when posting a picture of the two of them sailing in Mexico with the caption "Your smile lights up my days" (via NZ Herald). Throughout their relationship, he posted a few pictures on his Instagram feed, including when they were on day 19 of quarantining together in Auckland in 2021 (via NZ Herald). These posts have now since been deleted.

It's not surprising that Henderson is quiet about his dating life these days, given the media frenzy that occurred when he was dating Demi Moore. At the time, he told The Daily Telegraph that the intrusive attention was difficult. He continued, saying, ""I feel for anybody who has that level of celebrity where you can't lead a normal life."

When it comes to relationships, he has also come to realize that they are more important than work. In the same interview, Henderson said, "The more I invest in other areas of my life, whether it's relationships, creating, or travel, I become more relaxed about my work, and maybe even a better actor."

Alexandra Breckenridge met Casey Hooper at a Grammy Awards after-party in Los Angeles. At the time, she was pursuing her acting career and he had just finished years of touring as Katy Perry's lead guitarist (per Atlanta Magazine). Hooper appears in Perry's 2012 documentary "Part of Me" and the 2015 TV special "Katy Perry: The Prismatic World Tour."

Breckenridge and Hooper married on September 13, 2015. They welcomed a son, Jack ,in 2016 and a daughter, Billie, in 2017. And just like Mel left the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles to start a new life in the small, northern California town of Virgin River, Breckenridge and Hooper also moved out of L.A. to a farm just outside of Atlanta. "The rural areas of Georgia have an amazing sense of community we were lacking in L.A.," the actress told Atlanta Magazine. "We wanted our children to grow up in a place where they could play and ride their bikes that didn't feel like a big city."

As Breckenridge has to shoot "Virgin River" in Vancouver, the actor said that she wouldn't be able to do it without Hooper's support. He is not only "an incredible father and has always been super hands-on with the kids" as she told CT Insider, but he is also her biggest cheerleader. Breckenridge once showed off a pair of cheetah-print shoes on her Instagram that her husband sent "to remind [her] that [she] can go anywhere." It was the pick-me-up she needed at that moment as she was experiencing some serious self-doubt.

"Virgin River" Season 4 saw the budding relationship between Colin Lawrence's Preacher and his Aikido instructor Julia come to a halt when Paige reentered the picture. In real life, Lawrence is married to the actress who plays Julia, Lucia Walters. Acting was actually what brought the two together, as they met in acting school. They also shot a commercial together early on in their careers, Walters told "Survived the Shows."

Since getting married in 1999, the couple has continued to do acting projects together. One project was "Fifty Shades Darker," in which they played a couple who was dining at the same restaurant and taking an elevator with Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. Walters had read the book and knew what to expect but, as she told Cosmopolitan, Lawrence "didn't have a clue. He's like, 'Two days with you with no kids? Yes.'"

Walters said she and Lawrence enjoy getting to play characters who are nothing like their real selves. One of her favorite roles of Walters' was on a show called "The 4400." Lawrence had to play a "mean kind of husband — shutting me down and all that," Walters told "Survived the Shows." She continued, saying, "So fun, because that doesn't happen in real life so we get to play."

As the couple's children are the focus at home, Walters said that taking a break from their two daughters to work together feels pretty much like a date.  Whether or not she can continue to enjoy that experience in Season 5 of "Virgin River" is up in the air, but showrunner Patrick Sean Smith has teased that Julia is "kind of waiting in the wings" for Preacher (via TVLine).

Ben Hollingsworth (Dan Brady) and his wife Nila married in November 2012 after meeting each other by fate at a Los Angeles restaurant. At the 2016 Golden Maple Awards, he recalled how there was a "Cupid event" where a stranger tapped him on the shoulder and asked, "You see that beautiful blond in the red?" The man had noticed Hollingsworth and his future wife glancing at each other and told him that he should go sit next to her. The actor honestly thought it was a prank. "I thought Ashton Kutcher was gonna come out and 'Punk'd' me," he said. "I was like this is too good to be true." Nila is not an actor; she actually has her Masters in Criminology, Hollingsworth revealed on the red carpet of the Golden Maple Awards.

Since getting married, they welcome their first son, Hemingway, in 2016. Their second son, Gatsby, was born in 2018, and their youngest child, daughter Juniper, was born in 2020. When his wife was pregnant with their third child, he admitted he was very nervous. "I always looked at other families with three plus kids and thought, 'Man, those people are crazy, who does that?'" he told ET. "After all, we were struggling to survive with our two wild souls. The idea of a third seemed impossible," he continued. "But that's the thing; it's the idea that always seems unattainable. The capacity to expand our hearts lies within us all."

Zibby Allen's husband, Adam James Blair, is a visual artist from Northern Ireland (via Yahoo). Although they married in 2018, Allen, who plays Brie Sheridan on "Virgin River," actually didn't believe in marriage before she met Blair. "I didn't have many role models for marriages that look like something I wanted. I didn't like how people were treating each other in marriage, how they were treating marriage," she told Numéro Netherlands. "I still feel it can be a setup for disappointment, hurt and holding people to impossible standards, and trying to squeeze ourselves into a model of relationship that might be outdated."

Despite feeling chemistry that she had never experienced in other relationships, Allen told Blair from the start of their relationship that she didn't want to get hitched. However, as they spent more and more time together, he began to change her mind. The actress began to see marriage as more of a practice run that she could find out the long-term effects of just as if she was "committing to meditation or a diet or sobriety." For her husband, this "lets him off the hook from having to be something for me in order for me to stay in it" while she "[gets] to show up no matter who my beautiful husband is on one day or in a chapter in life."

In 1999, Annette O'Toole (Hope McCrea) and Michael McKean married, but the couple actually met two decades earlier when they were a part of "young Hollywood," O'Toole revealed on "Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum." They then didn't see each other for years until they were both divorced and were cast in Lifetime's "Final Justice" in 1998. They got to know each other as friends, discovering that they liked the same books, movies, and music, and kept in touch through email.

When McKean finally called O'Toole to ask her on a date, the actress remembered that she did something that she had only seen people do in movies. Her youngest daughter was sick at the time, so she asked McKean to call her again the next day. She then "put the phone down, and I went in the bathroom, and jumped up and down in silent screaming. It was ridiculous. I said, 'I'm not 14. What am I doing here?'" (per TheaterMania)

Their first date ended up predicting their marriage and determining their couple song. Before the actual date, the two of them went to a shoe store called the Shoe Lord to get dress boots for McKean. When he went to pay and was looking around for his old shoes, McKean said that the employee told him he'd given the shoes to his wife, meaning O'Toole. They then went to UCLA for a concert that had Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan playing, and they ended up clutching each other to Dylan's "Have I Told You Lately." And the rest was, as they say, history.

Tim Matheson (Vernon "Doc" Mullins) married his third wife, script supervisor Elizabeth Marighetto, on March 10, 2018 (via Twitter). He and his wife love to travel, and in an interview on "Chatting with B," the actor shared about the places they wanted to go to now since pandemic travel restrictions have been lifted. On the top of his list is Italy, as Marighetto is Italian and she has family there. He credits his wife for influencing his Californian wine tastes as he now loves Italian red wines including Barolos and Tignanellos.

As Matheson told Smashing Interviews, he also has a real love for Vancouver, where "Virgin River" shoots and where he's had to travel to since the mid-90s to do other television shows and movies. Although the couple has a home in the Hollywood Hills, they have another place in the Canadian city. As Matheson revealed to Smashing Interviews, "My wife and I have a place up here [in Vancouver] now, so maybe in the winter time or early spring we'll come back up and spend some time skiing and sightseeing. It is so beautiful. I could be a real tourist up here, get in a boat and go visit the local islands around Vancouver."

As of this writing, Sarah Dugdale, who plays the troubled Lizzie on "Virgin River," is dating an actor who has appeared on the show — but was not one of her on-screen love interests. Her actor boyfriend is Charlie Nesbitt, who is credited as the "Comforting Husband" on the 2019 episode "Everybody Has a Secret" (via IMDb).

It is not known if the couple met when Nesbitt shot his bit part, or if it was just a happy coincidence. In fact, not much is really known about their relationship at all except for what Dugdale chooses to reveal on her Instagram. Along with acting, Nesbitt is also a photographer, and he takes professional shots of the actress that she often uploads to her social media. In one of her longer captions on a photo of them together, she lovingly wrote, "My partner in crime, confidant, and fellow snack connoisseur. He's a man of many talents and has a big beautiful heart. You're one of a kind. Te amo."

Jenny Cooper (Joey Barnes) has three children with her husband, Dan. And just like her TV sister Alexandra Breckenridge, Cooper also has to rely on her husband to hold down the fort in their L.A. home when she needs to film in Vancouver. "I have a great support system at home with my husband, as well as our parents, who help out when I'm traveling for work," she told InBetween magazine. "When I'm not with [my children], I feel like I'm missing a limb, but they stay in their usual routine and that seems to work better than dragging them back and forth."

Interestingly, Cooper's husband is also the only one in their five-member family who seems to enjoy watching her on screen. In a 2021 interview of "Let's Dive In," Cooper revealed that she hates watching herself, likening it to a horror film. When she groans and squirms, her husband would ask what's the matter with her and to stop making noises so that he can watch the show.

Her kids don't enjoy watching her act either. "My kids don't like it one bit," Cooper continued. "They don't like seeing mommy play somebody else, especially if I'm emotional or angry or just anything even like wearing makeup and walking in high heels, they're like 'who is that?' I mean, we're in a pandemic, I've been walking around in pajamas."

Marco Grazzini (Mike Valenzuela)'s fiancée is singer and actor Alvina August. The two have been together since 2014, as Grazzini revealed on Instagram. On the Hallmark Channel's "Bubbly Sesh" podcast, August revealed that while she had always thought that she would find love the traditional way, the couple met in the most millennial fashion — through Tinder. "To be honest, I wasn't actually looking for anyone on Tinder," she admitted. "I was just there to promote my music, and I was on most apps — any app that I could promote myself."

Grazzini ended up commenting on one of August's videos, and they talked for three weeks before they met face to face. They had an eight-hour first date in which they played table tennis, and Grazzini revealed to her that he was an actor. She admitted that her first reaction to that was, "Oh no, what does that mean? Does that mean you're jobless or broke? I don't even know, because at the time that concept to me was so foreign." Nevertheless, they had an obvious connection and ended up going on three more consecutive dates that same week.

While August was initially hesitant about what Grazzini did for a living, he ended up helping her start her acting career as well. "I was helping him out with his auditions, and then my audition came for 'The Lion King' and he helped me out with that acting aspect because it was a musical," she said. "He has been a huge part in my transition and me becoming an actor and finding my purpose."