Ahead of her 40th wedding anniversary, Bette Midler is getting candid about the key to a long-lasting relationship. She and her husband, Martin von Haselberg, tied the knot in Las Vegas on December 16, 1984. The actress, 78, told Today.com that they kind of got married on a whim, as she's an "impulsive" person. "We went to Vegas and got married by an Elvis impersonator, always a good idea," she revealed when speaking to the outlet.
The impulsive decision has worked out in her favor. Although she had only been dating Martin for about six weeks when they got married, they're about to celebrate 40 years together.
Bette recently opened up about one of the ways they've made their marriage work when speaking to Entertainment Tonight. She told the outlet that for her and her husband, the key to a successful marriage has been "separate bedrooms."
"My husband snores," she added.
She went on to say that sleeping in separate rooms is not a recent development in their relationship. Instead, it's something they've been doing throughout their marriage. For the first two months after their marriage, they even stayed in separate houses, Bette previously revealed to Vanity Fair.
During the 1991 interview, they both admitted that they hardly knew each other when they got married, and Bette told the outlet that they "had a lot of trouble the first couple of years."
"I've always said we got married because there was nothing on TV," she said at the time. "Maybe deep down we were serious, but superficially we never said that this is forever, this is the ticket, we are committed to each other for life."
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For many years, Bette and Martin had no wedding photos to look back at (Las Vegas’ Starlight Chapel sent them some photos a few years ago after finding them), reported Today.com.
Bette didn't really like her own wedding dress, she admitted. She told Entertainment Tonight that she selected "the first thing on the rack."
But Martin previously told Vanity Fair that he was committed to making the marriage work even though he didn't know his wife very well when they decided to get married.
"Even though I didn't know her at all, I remember consciously making the decision that no matter what happens I'm going to keep working at this to make it work," Martin said at the time.
Bette and Martin have one daughter, Sophie von Haselberg. Sophie is now 37 years old and is also an actress.
In 2014, Bette told People that raising Sophie was her "greatest accomplishment."
"I didn’t do it by myself," she said at the time. "My husband is probably the greatest father who ever lived. He’s fantastic. He picked up the slack when I was on the road. He taught her a foreign language. He taught her to cook.”
At the time of that interview, Bette and Martin were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, and Bette shared some other marriage tips, beyond sleeping in separate rooms.
She listed listening, compromise, patience, and the ability to "pick your fights wisely."
"Don’t diminish each other. Don’t make each other less. Don’t try to make each other wrong all the time. Don’t blame. Stop assigning blame," she added. She admitted that blaming others is easy because "you want to push it onto someone else."
"You have to learn not to do that," she said.
