Living Apart Together: What It Is and the Famous Couples Who Do It
Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity marry today and will keep two homes. What living apart together means, how many U.S. newlyweds do it, and what Holland Taylor, Sarah Paulson and Gwyneth Paltrow have said about it.
- Living apart together, or LAT, describes a committed couple, married or not, who keep two separate homes.
- About 13% of U.S. newlyweds were not living with their spouse in 2018, up from 6% in 1980, according to researchers at Bowling Green State University.
- Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity, who marry today, Holland Taylor and Sarah Paulson, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk have all described living this way.
When Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity get married on Saturday, Oct. 24, they will be newlyweds with two addresses. She co-hosts Fox & Friends from New York; he moved his shows to Florida in 2024. For now, they see each other on weekends.
There is a name for that, and it is not as rare as it sounds.
What does living apart together mean?
Living apart together is a relationship in which two people are a committed couple but choose to keep separate homes instead of moving in together. Researchers usually apply the term to unmarried couples in long-term relationships, and some also include married couples who live separately.
The difference from other arrangements is the reason. A couple living apart together is not breaking up, and is not apart only because a job or a school forced it. They have decided that two homes work better for them, at least for now.
| Arrangement | Still a couple? | Two homes because of |
|---|---|---|
| Living apart together | Yes | Choice, often in the same city or region |
| Long-distance relationship | Yes | Distance: work, school or family in different places |
| Commuter marriage | Yes, married | A job in another city, with a home base for weekends |
| Separation | On pause or ending | Problems in the relationship |
Real couples mix these. Earhardt and Hannity have described their weekends as a long-distance routine, and each has said they are staying put: she in New York, he in Florida.
How common is it for married couples to live apart?
More common than it was. A 2020 profile from Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, found that 13% of people married in the previous year were not living with their spouse in 2018, up from 6% in 1980.
The researchers counted any newlywed living apart for a reason other than marital trouble, so the number includes couples kept apart by circumstance as well as by choice.
| Newlyweds’ age | Living apart from their spouse (2018) |
|---|---|
| 15 to 24 | 26.5% |
| 25 to 34 | 10.4% |
| 35 to 44 | 9.9% |
| 45 to 54 | 10.6% |
| 55 to 64 | 12.2% |
| 65 and older | 13.7% |
After the youngest group, the share rises with age from 45 on. And it does not climb with each new marriage: about 14% of people in a first marriage lived apart, compared with about 11% in a second and 9% in a third or later.
Which famous couples live apart?
Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity
The Fox News hosts have been together since about 2020 and got engaged at Christmas 2024. “It’s not conventional,” Earhardt told the Daily Mail in July 2025. “We live on opposite ends of the East Coast, but when you love someone, you make it work.”
Hannity said in March: “We never missed a weekend since we started dating.” Their full relationship timeline is here.
Holland Taylor and Sarah Paulson
Together for more than a decade, they keep separate homes in Los Angeles and share Taylor’s apartment when both are in New York.
“We don’t live together. That’s the secret,” Paulson said on the SmartLess podcast in May 2024. At the Emmys that September, she clarified: “We don’t live together meaning we don’t own a home together, but we are together more often than we are not.”
On The Drew Barrymore Show this week, Taylor, 83, put it this way: “We do as much time as we possibly can, because work takes us apart constantly.”
Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk
Paltrow and Falchuk married in September 2018 and did not move in together for about a year. In 2019, she told The Sunday Times that he spent four nights a week at her house and three at his own, with his children, and that her married friends called it “ideal.”
Looking back on the goop podcast in September 2025, both said they would not do it again. “I’m not sure that it didn’t just prolong that thing of like, we don’t know what we’re doing,” Paltrow said. Falchuk said it gave their children “too much power” over whether the two adults lived together.
What do couples who live apart have to agree on?
The famous examples answer the same few questions in public. How often they are together: every weekend for Earhardt and Hannity, “as much time as we possibly can” for Taylor and Paulson. Where they meet: one home, the other, or a third place both use.
And who else is in the house. Earhardt has said she is staying in New York partly because her daughter loves her school, and Paltrow and Falchuk built their schedule around four children from their first marriages. For them, it also had an end date: about a year after the wedding, they moved in together.
Living apart is not new in long marriages, either. Ina Garten has talked about the four months she and Jeffrey lived apart in the 1970s, at her request.
On screen, Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” ends with a couple deciding what their marriage will look like next. More in Love & Relationships, including how Holland Taylor and Sarah Paulson met.
— Bruno Monteiro
Sources: Krista K. Payne, Colette A. Allred and Susan L. Brown, “Married and Living Apart Together,” Family Profile FP-20-15, National Center for Family & Marriage Research, Bowling Green State University (2020), from U.S. Census Bureau data; Ainsley Earhardt to the Daily Mail (July 2025), via TV Insider; Sean Hannity on The Katie Miller Podcast (March 3, 2026); Sarah Paulson on SmartLess (May 2024) and at the 2024 Emmys; Holland Taylor on The Drew Barrymore Show (Oct. 20, 2026); Gwyneth Paltrow to The Sunday Times (June 2019), via TODAY.com (Francesca Gariano); Paltrow and Brad Falchuk on The goop Podcast (September 2025), via People (Hannah Sacks). Photos: The Drew Barrymore Show, Fox News, The Katie Miller Podcast, Gwyneth Paltrow/Instagram.
How FameCrumbs reports · Request a correction
