When we talked about Chet Hanks’ country music performance at the Stagecoach Music Festival last week, some of ya’ll mentioned that his mom, Rita Wilson, was also a country music singer. I had no idea about that, so thank you for bringing it to my attention! I listened to some of her music, and it’s not bad. She has a nice voice and is now on my radar.
Last week, Rita released a new country music album called Sound of a Woman. The record includes a track called “Marriage,” which pays tribute to the everyday trials and tribulations of marriage. Ahead of the album’s release, Rita gave People an exclusive interview. She and Tom Hanks have been married for 38 years, which, in Hollywood years, basically makes them dinosaurs. Rita talked about what makes them so compatible and what’s made their marriage work in the long term. Here are some excerpts from Rita’s exclusive with People:
Bathroom bonding: “That’s where you download everything. That’s where you download the day. You laugh about what you’re doing. In the mornings, you’re thinking about, ‘What are you doing today? Where are you going to be? Great, I want you there.’” Wilson admits that while it’s funny, it’s “very true.”
Shared values: “You have to be able to communicate to each other the things that are changing in your life – and also the things that are still staying the same so that you’re always working together for the greater good.”
Their one relationship rule: “You never go to bed mad. I heard that early, early on, and I thought, ‘That’s actually really good.’ You don’t want to wake up in the morning and have that lingering feeling. So whatever it is, resolve it before you go to bed.”
Grow and evolve together: “You’re not the same person you were when you got married. Who you are physically, who you are emotionally, spiritually is very different than who you are 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later.”
What Wilson wants people to know is that to have a healthy marriage, you need to have “the ability to grow, change and evolve together and support each other” over time. “I still look at my husband, and I still see him the way we were when we were 20. But at the same time, I know that we’re not, and I’m so grateful for that huge chunk of time that we’ve had together.”
I love what Rita has to say about what makes her marriage with Tom work so well. I celebrated my 15th wedding anniversary last Wednesday, and agree with what she said about having shared values and being able to grow and evolve together. Mr. Rosie and I both grew up with Reagan Republican parents and bonded over how our shared values were different from our family’s. There are so many horror stories about men who suddenly changed thanks to the manosphere, but my husband is the same as he’s always been and usually listens to podcasts about films, like “Blank Check.”
As for the bathroom stuff, I am assuming that Rita means they catch up over things like brushing their teeth and showering together, and not in a Meghan Trainor double toilet kinda way! Still, there is an intimacy to the bathroom in general. There is also some credence to Rita’s claim that sharing a bathroom is how they stay connected. While that’s not where my husband and I do our catching up, Rita is not the first person to give me this advice. A former coworker, who is the same age as she is, once told me that the secret to her marriage was that she and her husband took showers together. They had double shower heads and would chat and debrief as they each got clean. I get it! Grooming is so personal and there is an intimacy factor to letting someone into your process. You gotta find those moments of connections anywhere you can, so I won’t judge Rita and Tom for finding it in the bathroom.
Photos credit: StillMoving.Net for Netflix, Getty Images, People Magazine via Twitter