Glaring Red Flags In Candace Cameron Bure's Marriage

Candace Cameron Bure has been haunted by various controversial moments, some of which have put her marriage in the spotlight. The actor has been ridiculed online for her political views (her 2024 Election Day Message had critics screaming hypocrite) and her opinions on traditional marriage. She notably infuriated a big chunk of the internet when she told The Wall Street Journal that Great American Family, the network Bure joined after her departure from Hallmark, would be focusing on portraying "traditional marriage," in other words, the network's main focus wouldn't be on featuring gay couples.

Matters got worse when the channel's owner, Bill Abbott, appeared to try and remedy Bure's comments, telling the outlet, "It's certainly the year 2022, so we're aware of the trends. There's no whiteboard that says, 'Yes, this' or 'No, we'll never go here.'" Prominent celebrities called Abbott out for his declaration, with "One Tree Hill" star Hilarie Burton Morgan taking to X, formerly Twitter, to decry the statement. "Being LGBTQ isn't a 'trend,'" she wrote. "There is nothing untraditional about same-sex couples."

In a lengthy statement Bure released to People in response to the backlash, she apologized and explained she never intended to hurt or discriminate against anyone and that the overwhelmingly negative response left her feeling heartbroken. "If you know me, you know that I am a person who loves fiercely and indiscriminately," her statement read. "I believe that every human being bears the image of God. Because of that, I am called to love all people, and I do." Bure's comments on traditional marriage have led many to take a closer look at her and her husband, Valeri Bure's, lengthy relationship, and critics have found plenty to talk about.

Every relationship is different, but couples who go from dating to getting engaged within less than a year often raise eyebrows. Celebrity marriages are notoriously short-lived, but Candace Cameron Bure's most certainly hasn't been, despite her and Valeri Bure's whirlwind romance prior to their engagement. Candace has, however, admitted that there were some crucial things she and Valeri hadn't discussed prior to getting engaged, like religion.

Candace and Valeri went on their first date the day after they met, and sparks flew. It was only after they got engaged a couple of months later that it occurred to Candace to ask her husband-to-be whether he believed in God. He said he did, and for Candace, that was enough at the time. However, as the years wore on, her relationship with God deepened, and she realized that she never really had a true relationship with him before, and neither did her husband. Speaking to the The JWLKRS Podcast, she recalled wanting to start attending church and getting passionate about living a Christian life, but her husband was put off by her newfound passion for her faith. "You're actually making me take two steps back," he told her. "Unless I ask you about God, don't talk to me about him, because you're in my face about it and you're totally turning me off."

Candace admitted this conversation broke her heart, but the two eventually worked through it. She respected her husband's wishes and decided to let her actions do the talking — and they did, with her husband eventually joining her in her faith.

When Candace Cameron Bure wrote her memoir, "Balancing It All: My Story of Juggling Priorities and Purpose," she revealed candid details about her marriage, and one tidbit that caught the attention of critics was a passage in which she described the relationship's power dynamics. "My husband is a natural-born leader. I quickly learned that I had to find a way of honoring his take-charge personality and not get frustrated about his desire to have the final decision on just about everything," she wrote (via Charisma News). "I am not a passive person, but I chose to fall into a more submissive role in our relationship because I wanted to do everything in my power to make my marriage and family work."

Many with different ideas and views saw the dynamic in Bure's marriage as a major red flag, and it appears some critics on the internet dubbed her weak for allowing her husband to take the sole lead in their marriage. Bure clapped back with a post on Facebook that featured a gym selfie of the former Hallmark actor flexing her muscles. "Nothing weak about this — people talk about what they don't understand." She was met with plenty of supportive messages in the comments.

In a subsequent interview with HuffPost, Bure explained what she'd meant in the book when she talked about being submissive to her husband. "The definition I'm using with the word 'submissive' is the biblical definition of that. So, it is meekness, it is not weakness. It is strength under control, it is bridled strength," she explained. She went on to elaborate that she'd found that having two leaders in a relationship ends up causing a plethora of problems, likening marriage to the workings of the military and the presidential office. "I mean, you have one president, you know what I'm saying?" she emphasized.

No marriage is without its fair share of trials and tribulations, but Candace Cameron Bure has been surprisingly open about the tough moments she's experienced in her marriage, something many celebrities prefer to keep private.

In a candid 2016 Facebook post celebrating her 20th wedding anniversary, Bure opened up about what it's really been like to be married for two decades. " There have been several tough years, in a row, ups and downs, bad attitudes and bad decisions, but we've persevered," she wrote. "We rode them out. We loved each other through them. We kept the focus; God's glory." She also admitted that she and her husband don't pretend to be perfect, but that their faith and trust in God makes up for their human mistakes.

When she celebrated her 28th wedding anniversary in 2024, Bure spoke to Fox News Digital, saying that, even though marriage is tough, the hard times brought her and her husband closer together. "When you really do go through the depths of the valley, and you come back out on top as many times as you go through that roller coaster of life — within marriage, every time you come back on top it's like another notch in the belt of commitment, staying together," she told the outlet. Bure added that honoring each other is the foundation of her marriage with Valeri Bure. Even when neither of them deserve it, the couple show each other grace, she explained, adding that continuing to love each other when they least feel like it has been crucial in their relationship.

While most couples who are madly in love can't bear the thought of being separated, Candace Cameron Bure and Valeri Bure, surprisingly, find that regular distance from each other keeps the spark alive in their marriage.

With Candace working as a full-time actor for Great American Family, she and her husband often spend periods of time apart. This, instead of putting strain on their marriage as one might expect, has had the opposite effect, Candace told Us Weekly. "Because I travel a lot, that's the secret! Because, you know, being away from each other makes the heart grow fonder," she quipped. She also admitted, however, that it has its downsides. "[A] lot of times we're like two ships passing in the night with our work schedule," she told Us Weekly in a separate interview.

Being used to regularly spending time apart made the Covid-19 lockdown much harder on Candace's marriage. Suddenly, she and Valeri were spending all of their time together with no breaks in between. "We were like, 'This might be the most amount of time we've actually spent together in years. This is either going to make us or break us,'" she told Us Weekly in 2020. "And you know what? It's made us." Candace admitted that she realized all the time spent away from her family was actually not as good a thing for her marriage as she initially thought. "I'm thankful that it happened in that way because it's made our relationship stronger," she added.

While discussing her lengthy marriage with Us Weekly in 2018, Candace Cameron Bure shared some secrets to her long-lasting relationship with Valeri Bure. "You really try to, I always say, put your spouse on a pedestal," she said, to some people's surprise. "And in return, you're hoping, which my husband does, we have the same respect for one another... and some days neither of us deserve it, but we do it because we honor one another and respect each other."

While there's absolutely nothing wrong with admiring and respecting your partner, experts warn that putting your partner on a pedestal can have negative consequences for a relationship. Speaking to Live Science, psychologist and study researcher Jennifer Tomlinson explained studies have shown that this kind of behavior in relationships can lead to problems later on, unless there's a balance (which Candace claims she and her husband have). "While it may be tempting to provide effusive praise, I think it's also important to communicate understanding and validation of a person's core identity," Tomlinson emphasized. "People who are feeling over-idealized may feel like they have more power in the relationship, so they may be less willing to put their partner first."

Candace Cameron Bure seriously divided her fans when she celebrated Donald Trump's return to the White House on social media, but this wasn't the first time the actor has stirred up controversy with her posts. She previously had fans divided when she posted a candid snap on Instagram of her and her husband, with the latter's hand resting on her breast. The internet had a mini meltdown (not the good kind) when Bure first posted the picture, leading her to delete it, but she later re-uploaded it, captioning it, "Sweet and spicy. 24 years and counting."

Bure has been very open about her sex life in interviews, so much so that even her daughter, Natasha Bure, told Us Weekly that her parents' PDA sometimes get a tad too much. "I, like, get cringed out by it when I'm in person with them. I'm like, 'This is too much.' ...I'm like, 'OK, guys, it's family time. ...You can do this on you [sic] own,'" she jokingly told the outlet.

The intimate details Candace has shared about the inner workings of her marriage has been a little TMI for more people than just her daughter. "[We have] sex any time of the day, even if the kids are home. We just make sure our kids can't pick the lock on our bedroom door!" she told Us Weekly in 2014. Speaking to Fox News, the actor said she's very much a fan of PDA, adding that the idea that married couples stop having a sexual relationship after being together for a long time isn't something she buys into. "The playfulness doesn't stop just because you're married," she said. "This is just how my husband and I are. You know, we adore each other and we still have fun and we're spicy together."

When you marry an actor, it stands to reason that you'll sometimes have to witness them kissing other people, but Candace Cameron Bure's husband, Valeri Bure, initially had some trouble accepting this.

"It's something that Val and I wrestled with a lot in our marriage," Candace admitted on her eponymous podcast, adding that Valeri told her, aside from finding it really uncomfortable to watch his wife kiss someone else on-screen, he found it hard to watch her be close to her characters' love interests in her films. "We've had those struggles and a lot of conversation and prayer, and I have the same exact moment when I thought, 'I think this is it. I think I have to give this up,'" Candace recalled. She started rejecting movies that required any kissing on her part, but seeing her making these sacrifices made her husband reconsider. "Then it came to a point where he said, 'I can handle it, and I don't want you to give up your entire career,'" Candace shared.

Christmas movie fanatics know all too well that Candace hasn't stopped making these films, nor is she skipping out on the long-awaited kiss at the end — but her husband still is. Speaking to Today, Candace joked that, while Valeri wholeheartedly supports her career, he still doesn't exactly want to see her kissing other people, so she always fast-forwards those parts of her films when they watch it together. As a couple, they'd agreed that she'd never accept roles that require more than kissing. "He is so proud and supportive," she told the outlet. "It's just one of those things where we don't have to watch the last three seconds of the movie."