Celebs Who Married Their Cousins

Spouse's Name: Myra Gale Brown
How They're Related: Second cousins

In 1957, after he skyrocketed to fame with hits like Great Balls of Fire, Jerry Lee Lewis married his second cousin, Myra Gale Brown. He was 23. She was 13. His career went into a tailspin, and he immediately fell from the charts. Lewis is now on his seventh marriage, to Judith Brown, who is his second cousin Rusty Brown's ex-wife. Good thing he has a big family, or Lewis would probably be single.

Spouse's Name: Prince Philip
How They're Related: Third cousins

After a successful stint in the Navy, Philip rekindled a friendship with Elizabeth that quickly turned to romance. The pair, both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, married in 1947.

Spouse's Name: Kyra Sedgwick
How They're Related: Distant cousins

When playing the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the actor's wife, Kyra Sedgwick, doesn't have to look far. That's because the couple of more than 30 years found out they are distant cousins when they tracked their genealogy on the PBS show Finding Your Roots. So technically, Kyra is no degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. She wins.

Spouse's Name: Regina Peruggi (first wife)
How They're Related: Second cousins

The former New York City mayor has been married three times, the first time to his second cousin. The two separated in the mid-1970s, but didn't divorce until 1982 — the same year he married newscaster Donna Hanover. He later married Judith Nathan, but the couple divorced in 2019.

Spouse's Name: Elsa Lowenthal
How They're Related: First cousin on his mother's side, and second cousin on his father's side

While Albert Einstein was married to his first wife, he began a relationship with Elsa Lowenthal, who was instrumental in helping him with his famous work in physics. Not only did Einstein marry his cousin, but she was also his double cousin: The two were related on both sides of Einstein's family.

Spouse's Name: Eleanor Roosevelt
How They're Related: Fifth cousins (once removed)

Though the two both grew up as Roosevelts, they grew up on different sides of the Roosevelt family and only met briefly as children. The two were reacquainted as adults at a White House ball hosted by Eleanor's uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt.

Spouse's Name: Zerelda Mimms
How They're Related: First cousins

Zerelda Mimms' mother was the sister of James' father, making the two first cousins. Mimms was even named for James' mother. The couple was engaged for nine years before they married in 1874, while the James gang was in full swing.

Spouse's Name: Abigail Smith
How They're Related: Third cousins

Though they had known one another since they were children, it wasn't until John saw Abigail at a party when she was 17 that he saw her through different eyes. Three years later, the couple was married and not long after that they welcomed their first child. And though the couple spent many of their years apart, as John became increasingly involved in the Revolutionary War, they remained close through correspondence. They reportedly exchanged more than 1,000 letters.

Spouse's Name: Virginia Clemm
How They're Related: First cousins

When Edgar Allan Poe was 27 and Virginia Clemm was 13, the two cousins married. Poe made his living solely as a writer, a fact that led the couple to struggle for most of their lives together. The relationship, and Clemm's death at the age of 24 of tuberculosis, is thought to be the source of many of Poe's now-famous short stories.

Spouse's Name: Maria Barbara Bach

How They're Related: Second cousins

Johann Sebastian Bach married Maria Barbara Bach in 1706. The couple had seven children together, though many died as infants. The couple was married for 14 years before Maria died. Bach married a singer named Anna Wulcken a year later.