Boys might laugh at girls when they're not funny, but Benji Madden has never had to fake it with Cameron Diaz.
"I'm a total goofball," Cameron told Cosmopolitan about her approach to dating in 2000, "and I think guys see how much of an idiot I can make of myself so they aren't worried about embarrassing themselves."
Naturally, there was something about the Charlie's Angels star besides her surely adorable idiocy that attracted the Good Charlotte rocker when he was invited to a dinner party Cameron hosted in 2014 with Benji's sister-in-law Nicole Richie and her husband, Joel Madden. And the feeling was mutual, because the couple hightailed it to the altar less than a year after that fateful gathering, tying the knot at home on Jan. 5, 2015.
When it came to meeting The One, "it was one of those things where everyone tells you, 'You just know when you know,'" Cameron, who shares 4-year-old daughter Raddix with Benji, recalled on Andy Cohen's Radio Andy in 2016. "I was like, 'What does that mean?'" But once she and the musician she affectionately referred to as "Benj" were finally in the same room together, she got it.
"You just know when you know," she reiterated. "Like, you're my husband."
Cameron and Benji have been singing each other's praises ever since—though in a relatively low key since their romance really took off once Cameron had already decided to take a giant leap back from her movie star life. Having logged time as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and after spending 20 years navigating the highs and lows of global fame, she was more than ready to press pause on acting after the release of Annie in 2014.
And since she didn't have a committed relationship with social media when she exited stage right and hooked up with her eventual husband...
Et voilà, a disappearing act in plain sight, trading in the glare of the spotlight for the cozy warm glow of Benji's love.
"He's really taught me to value myself a lot more," Cameron reflected on Michelle Visage's Rule Breakers podcast in 2022. She didn't necessarily expect to get that from marriage, she explained, because she was used to "receiving so much validation elsewhere and in all these other ways."
But Benji and Raddix were all that mattered. "We know that, no matter what, we can just go and be just a family anywhere and we're fine," Cameron said. "We don't need any of the things that we have—other than each other."
Though now they might need a record player, Benji sharing recently—in the rarest of comments about his family world—that there was always music on at home.
"The song in our house right now is 'Rock and a Hard Place,' [by] Bailey Zimmerman," the 44-year-old said on TODAY in October. "My daughter always says, 'Play "dam is broken."'" He laughed at the reference to the lyric that actually goes, "It ain't broke yet, but damn, it needs fixin'," adding, "We're listening to records nonstop."
Raddix has also been treated to at least an album's worth of original kids' music, according to Cameron, who in addition to admiring Benji's hotness from way back, also calls him the "best dad ever."
"He has, like, the best songs," she informed Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show in October. "They play in my head all the time because he sings them to her, and she knows the words, and it's the sweetest thing ever."
But while these sorts of behind-the-scenes details do get shared on occasion, Cameron and Benji are on the same page about mainly keeping their family life to themselves, Raddix's birth toward the end of 2019 marking a rare occasion where they used social media to break personal news.
"I don't come from this era of sharing my life," Cameron, whose Instagram is largely devoted to cooking and her Avaline wine business, said on the Everything Iconic With Danny Pellegrino podcast in November 2020. "That's always been something I've been very protective of, because I come from the era of tabloid invasion into my privacy and people stalking me and following me. So my instinct has always been to protect myself from not having the world know what I'm doing or where I'm going at any given point just so that I could exist."
Benji does do birthdays, however, such as when he called himself "the LUCKIEST guy ALIVE" on his wife's 45th in 2017, or this past Aug. 30, when he shouted out his "beautiful wife, best friend, best partner in everything, ride or die," etc., for her 51st.
And while Cameron is recently unretired, having shot the upcoming Netflix movie Back in Action with Jamie Foxx last year, she could have never acted again and still there would have been mass interest in her romantic endgame—not least thanks to her quietly epic dating history.
"I'm grateful for all of it—whether it was something quick and passing or something that lingered too long," Cameron told InStyle about two months before she and Benji were first photographed hand-in-hand, confirming dating rumors without saying a word. "There is not one thing I've been through that hasn't been a lesson that led me to this moment, and I can't believe how great life keeps getting."
Her recent endorsement of separate bedrooms (plus one in the middle for their "relations") aside, you can more often find her waxing rhapsodic about domestic life.
"I love being married," Cameron gushed on the YouTube series Makeup & Friends in 2020. "The best thing that's ever happened to me is finding my husband, and our partnership, and our friendship." Moreover, she added, "I love being a mother. It's the best, best, best part of my life. I'm so grateful and so happy and it's the best thing ever and I'm so lucky to do it with Benj and we're having the best time. I'm thrilled. I can't believe it."
If you need to see it to believe it as they celebrate their ninth wedding anniversary, keep reading for Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden's love story in photos:
One month before tying the knot, Cameron Diaz flashed what appeared to be an engagement ring from Benji Madden.
Jan. 27, 2015: Courtship to Courtside
The newlyweds were all loved up watching the Lakers play the Wizards in L.A.
Benji gets a tattoo of his Cameron's name on his chest.
The There's Something About Mary star opens up on Andy Cohen's Radio Andy show about how she and Benji met.
"The first thing I said when I first met my husband was, 'He's hot,'" she says. "How come I didn't know this before? We had never been in the same circle."
Cameron adds that they formally met when she hosted a dinner party at her house with his brother Joel Madden and sister-in-law Nicole Richie. Joel asked if he could invite Benji. Cameron says, "Then I saw him again. Wait a second, still hot!"
June 2016: We Are Family
Nicole Richie's dad Lionel Richie, husband Joel Madden, sister-in-law Cameron and brothers-in-law Josh (on the left) and Benji showed up to support her Harlow 1960 x REVOLVE launch.
The two vacation in Italy again.
"Getting married to him was the best thing that ever happened to me," she tells InStyle about Benji. "My husband's the best. He's the greatest human being, and he's my great partner. Marriage is certainly hard, and it's a lot of work. You need somebody who's willing to do the work with you, because there's no 60-40 in marriage. It's 50-50, period. All the time."
Cameron and Benji announce on Instagram that they have welcomed a baby girl, Raddix Madden.
"I'm off line mostly these days, just working, painting, making things and doing family life, but I have grown to like my little tradition of coming back on special occasions to show love to my Queen," Benji wrote on Instagram. "so today, it's a very Happy Birthday to my beautiful wife, best friend, best partner in everything, ride or die, greatest Mom to our little girl, @Avaline wine boss, family chef, advisor, collaborator and everything else."
March 2024: A Bigger Brood
The couple announce the arrival of their second child, a son named Cardinal Madden.
"He is awesome," they share in a joint Instagram post, "and We are all so happy he is here!"