Decades of love! James Van Der Beek and wife Kimberly Van Der Beek (née Brook) have been a swoonworthy pair for more than 10 years.
The Dawson’s Creek alum met Kimberly in 2009, less than one year after finalizing his divorce from ex-wife Heather McComb.
“I was in Israel, on a trip with an organized group, when it hit me: I was done being single. I wanted a real relationship. A soul mate. Someone with whom I could build a family. I was mid-revelation, rattling all this off to a friend of mine when a voice interrupted us, wanting to ask him a question,” James recalled in an August 2020 Instagram post. “I was annoyed. Who the hell was stepping all over my moment? I turned around … it was @vanderkimberly.”
He continued at the time: “Three days later, I asked her what she was looking for in a relationship. Her answer: ‘I’m not looking for a relationship.’ Six months later we were living together. Two weeks after that we were pregnant, and almost exactly one year to the date after she’d first interrupted me … we were married.”
Us Weekly confirmed in August 2010 that the twosome tied the knot in a “small spiritual ceremony” in Tel Aviv — where they first met.
James and the “Bathroom Chronicles” podcast host have continued to grow in love while expanding their family. The couple, who have a large brood of six children, have been candid about coparenting their little ones through the years.
“The nice thing with this many [kids] is that you see your parenting mistakes in real time,” the Dancing With the Stars alum told Us and other reporters in October 2019 after the fourth week of the dancing competition. “Anything you do to them, they immediately do to each other. You realize, ‘Oh wait, we’ve got to really dial in this conflict/resolution thing. [It’s about] just setting the right example.’”
Several weeks later, James revealed during the DWTS broadcast that his wife had suffered a miscarriage.
“My wife Kimberly went through every expectant parent’s worst nightmare. We lost the baby,” the Varsity Blues star tearfully said during the November 19, 2019, episode, before performing with pro partner Emma Slater. “The little soul that we had expected to welcome into our family took a shortcut to whatever lies beyond. You never know why these things happen. That’s what I’ve been telling my kids.”
He continued at the time: “Kimberly, from her hospital bed, said to me, ‘I am not done watching you dance.’ Kimberly, I love you. When words fail, you sing. When there are no words, you dance. Kimberly, I’m dancing for you, I’m dancing for us.”
James — who welcomed rainbow baby Jeremiah in 2021 with the Teenage Paparazzo actress — later opened up to Us about how the coronavirus pandemic altered his priorities.
“It’s just been a real lesson in being present and recognizing how much more I need to be present, with my kids and family and what’s really important,” the CSI: Cyber alum exclusively told Us in September 2020. “I’ve been paying a lot more attention to what I consume in terms of food, media, stories, entertainment. Does it enrich me? Does it make me happy? Does it give me an energy? And how do I feel afterwards?”
He added: “I think we’ve all come to this realization that we were all so busy before with stuff that didn’t really serve us and didn’t necessarily make us happy. So now it’s like, ‘What am I building my life around?’ [I realized] so many of the things that I entertained doing were either based in some outdated idea of what I thought would be important to make me happy or somebody else’s hope or dream or expectation.”
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