The text message that started Alison Brie and Dave Franco's love story.

Alison Brie was "never really interested" in getting married. Until she met the right person.

The actress, 42, married husband Dave Franco, 40, in 2017 after meeting at Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 2011.

On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2020, she recalled the matchmaking magic from her friend Jules.

"The two of them are friends and she had invited him out to dinner with us there ... he was sitting next to her across the table and ... my friend texts me under the table and was like, 'You should hook up with Dave.'"

Brie responded with an enthusiastic "Yes, please" and a thumbs-up emoji, and Jules then showed Franco the message.

"The rest of the night we were lip-locked," Brie recently told PEOPLE.

Watch: The trailer for 'Together' starring Brie and Franco. Post continues after video.

"We had a great two days together. When I did my walk of shame in the morning, I accidentally stole his perfect white T-shirt, and he had to reach out to me to get it back. At the end of the trip, I wrote my phone number on it and I hid it in his bag, so he found it on the way to the airport and texted."

After that initial weekend, Brie and Franco spent time together in New York City. On their last day together, Franco left a note on Brie's sweatshirt asking her to come to Paris with him, where he was travelling to film a movie.

She did.

In an interview with Metro in 2016, Brie said she realised Franco was 'the one' pretty quickly during their time together.

"There was a semi-immediate click... it felt super-easy and natural, and I think that's probably how it should feel," she said.

In 2013, they starred in a Funny or Die video together, which Franco wrote and directed, about what it takes to be his "dream girl". Around this time, they were papped walking together a couple of times.

But they didn't 'confirm' their relationship until two years later, after their engagement in 2015.

Brie was "so shocked" by the proposal that she "burst out laughing".

"I asked him a number of times if he was being serious before saying yes," she told Larry King in 2017.

They made their first red carpet appearance together a month later for the premiere of Brie's film Sleeping With Other People.

Brie and Franco met in 2011 and wed in 2017. Image: Instagram/@alisonbrie

In a February 2016 interview with Yahoo! Style, she said she was never that bothered about marriage, but Franco changed her mind.

"I just met that person that I was like, 'Well, I'm really in love with you and would like to grow old with you,'" she recalled.

"I actually think it's much more romantic when two people are like, 'Oh, I could go either way on marriage, but I want to marry you.'"

In March 2017, Brie and Franco were married in a secret wedding. There's pretty much no detail about the day online, besides Franco describing it as "low-profile".

"It was great, it was really special," he told Entertainment Tonight. "It was intimate, and it was really fun."

A year later, Brie publicly discussed their decision not to have human children. The couple had two cats at the time of the interview who they considered enough of a handful.

"I don't really want to have kids. It's great because I don't worry about when I should get pregnant … I don't think about it every day," she explained to The Sunday Times.

"It would be nice, but I think of all the things that would be so stressful. I think about how much we're involved in our cats' lives. Oh my God, if it was a child!"

The couple have spoken about not wanting kids. Image: Getty.

Over the years, the couple have also worked together numerous times.

Most recently, Brie and Franco starred in the 2025 horror-comedy film Together, where they play a couple whose bodies start to merge after an encounter with a supernatural force.

Speaking to PEOPLE, Franco called it "the most intense experience we've ever had on-set," adding he "could not have made this movie with anyone else".

One of the reasons the couple often work together is to spend more time in each other's company.

"Our jobs tear us apart a lot of the time," Franco explained.

Brie agrees, previously telling the Los Angeles Times, "More than anything, it's just nice to be together. You spend so much time apart when you're shooting on location and in different cities."

But, the entertainers also acknowledge it's important to maintain their independence and boundaries.

They will set rules like, "Okay, we can write from noon to 5, then it's dinnertime, and let's hang," Brie told PEOPLE.

At the end of the day, no matter if it's work or personal time, they're just absolutely besotted with each other.

"There's a lot of love in the house," said Franco.

They have a long history of working together.

In June 2017, their comedy film The Little Hours was released, with Brie playing a sexually frustrated nun and Franco playing a man who arrives at the convent.

At the time, Brie explained it was great to work with her partner (and her friends, for that matter).

Brie and Franco have worked together numerous times. Image: Getty.

"Working with friends and people that I know and love…. It's just so much more fun, you get to skip that period of time where you're trying to get to know everyone and being polite. You just get to be intimate with each other and have a great time," she told the Los Angeles Times.

Speaking of intimacy, Franco joked to the Hollywood Reporter that the couple learned a very important lesson from The Little Hours.

"Brie should not be on set while [he is filming] sex scenes with other women," he joked.

In June 2020, Franco made his directorial debut with the horror film The Rental, which Brie starred in. She didn't know she would be involved in front of the camera until she helped him with the script.

"In this case, I got to read a couple of drafts of the script before he asked me to be in the movie," she told heyuguys.com.

"That was kinda nice because there was a detachment in a way that I could just read my husband's work, give notes, and it had nothing to do with me."

She agreed to star in the film, which led to some interesting set dynamics.

"I went to ask a question like, 'Babe... do you think I should — I mean, Dave, Mr. Director, sir'. I took him aside into the other room, and I was like, 'Do you want me to call you Dave when we're on set instead of babe and honey? Does that undermine your authority?'

"He just laughed at me and said 'I want you to call me David Franco'. I did call him babe and honey throughout shooting and I actually think it felt like we were mum and dad of the set. We really felt like husband and wife, but we're able to be professional."

Feature Image: Getty

This article was originally published in January 2021 and has since been updated.