13 Photos Of Dondre Whitfield And Salli Richardson-Whitfield Over The Years

We love a longevous love story! (That’s a 25-cent word for long-lasting, by the way.) That’s exactly what actress and director Salli Richardson-Whitfield and actor Dondre Whitfield have. The couple tied the knot in 2022 after meeting 27 years ago while he was working together on his series Between Brothers with Kadeem Hardison and Tommy Davidson.

While appearing on the OWN series Black Love in 2019, the beauty admitted that she was the first person to say the L word.

“I think I was the first person to say, ‘You gon’ marry me, or I’m gonna marry you.’ I was just in love,” she said at the time, before delving into the day she told Dondre she loved him. “What do you do when you’re so in love? I think I said, ‘You don’t have to say nothin’, I just want you to know how I feel.'”

Of course, Dondre felt the same.

“Literally, when we first got together, we spent five days straight–like, I didn’t go home. I slept with my clothes on; we didn’t do anything. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t try anything. There was something about her that I just felt that connection,” he said during a Black Love panel in 2021. “Every day, I took her to breakfast. I went to the mall so I could buy me some new clothes. I didn’t go home for five days straight. That’s literally how that happened.”

The two tied the knot and soon became parents to kids Parker (a proud Spelman student) and Dre.

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And while Salli was sure she was in love with Dondre early on, she didn’t realize he was truly the one for her until they were already husband and wife.

“We had our ups and downs and breakups to figure out how we work this out, especially in Hollywood and both being in the business and under different types of pressures…I feel like once you get married, you don’t know still. You don’t know what you’re signing up for. And I truly believe that now, in our marriage, I don’t know if I knew then, but I know now,” she said in 2021.

The pair have a come a long way since they met in the late ’90s. See photos of the two and their kiddos over the years.