- Lisa Kudrow, 61, is married to French advertising executive Michel Stern, 66, who moved to the United States from France in the 1980s for his career and has remained ever since.
- In a recent appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Kudrow described their bond after 30 years of marriage as “not a romance” but rather “the most intimate relationship you can have,” adding that she is “not going anywhere.”
- Their son Julian Stern, now 27, is making his television debut in the third and final season of his mother’s HBO show The Comeback, due to air in 2026.
She played the most lovably chaotic woman on television for ten straight years. But in real life, Lisa Kudrow has had exactly one love story, and it is genuinely one of the best ones in Hollywood.
No headlines. No drama. No public breakdowns or mystery splits. Just a French guy she spotted in her apartment one day in the late 1980s, who she decided was absolutely perfect, said nothing about it for six years, and eventually married. And now, three decades later, she is still talking about him like he is the only man she has ever seen.
That man is Michel Stern. And if you only know him as “Lisa Kudrow husband,” you are missing a story that is honestly more interesting than anything Phoebe Buffay ever got up to.
He Was Dating Her Roommate
The setup sounds like something the Friends writers would have rejected for being too convenient. Kudrow first laid eyes on Michel Stern when he was dating her French roommate, having just moved to Los Angeles from France. She thought he was wonderful. She did absolutely nothing about it.
“But I’m freakishly polite, so I saw him and went, ‘Well, he’s the perfect man, and it’s all ruined because now they’re together,'” she recalled. “I thought that’s not nice to flirt. But the minute I saw him, I went, ‘Well, that’s it. There he is.'”
So what did she do? She left the room every time he came to collect her roommate. Every time he arrived, she would say “Hi” and quietly disappear. He thought she was a complete oddity.
Then the roommate and Michel split up after a couple of months. Lisa still said nothing. She waited. And waited. And then, six years later, they crossed paths again at her former roommate’s birthday party and, according to Kudrow, they just never stopped from that moment on.
Six years. She held onto that feeling for six years, said nothing, followed every rule in the book, and fate still found a way to make it work. Phoebe would have approved.
Who Is Michel Stern, Actually?
Michel Stern was born in France in 1958, completed his schooling in Paris, and moved to the United States in the late 1980s to pursue a career in advertising. He is five years older than Lisa, making him 67 in 2025. Not exactly a jaw-dropping age gap by Hollywood standards, but enough that people ask about it.
Despite being married to one of the most recognisable actresses on the planet for nearly three decades, Stern has kept the details of his personal and professional life almost entirely out of the public eye. He does not have a verified social media presence. He does not give interviews. He shows up to the occasional red carpet, looks quietly distinguished, and then disappears again.
What is known is that he is successful in advertising, that he genuinely loves watching Friends reruns even though his wife finds watching herself on screen mortifying, and that he is, by all accounts, an extraordinarily devoted husband and father.
“Michel and I started watching some of season 4, which I thought I had watched, but it’s as if I didn’t. He enjoys them more than I do because I’m mortified with myself,” Kudrow said during the Friends reunion special.
He watches old episodes of his wife’s TV show in his spare time. That is, genuinely, the most romantic thing anyone has ever done.
The Marriage That Actually Works
After reconnecting and dating for about two years, they married on May 27, 1995, in a small, private ceremony in Malibu, California, with only close family and friends in attendance. Some of her Friends cast members were there, including Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry. The timing was notable, too. They tied the knot the week after the very first season of Friends finished airing.
From the outside, it looks effortless. From the inside, Lisa has always been honest that it takes real intention. “When Michel and I decided to get married, we understood: We’re not promising to love each other forever, because you can’t do that, but we are promising to work on whatever problems come up. We’re committed to our marriage working,” she told Glamour.
She has also been clear about what keeps things running smoothly. “We respect each other’s independence, and I don’t mean that as a euphemism. I don’t mean relationship-wise outside the marriage. Clear? I don’t like to travel. So if he wants to go on a golf trip, he goes. I think people get in trouble when they assume they’re supposed to be one unit, in sync about everything. Marriage is like being on a team. Each teammate is different, but you have the same goal.”
It is the kind of advice that sounds obvious and turns out to be incredibly rare in practice.
And then earlier this year, Lisa said something that sent people spiralling. On The Drew Barrymore Show, ahead of their 30th wedding anniversary, she described their marriage as “not a romance” and “even more than a family member,” calling it “the most intimate relationship you can have” before firmly stating: “I’m not going anywhere. No way.”
Some people read panic into that quote. Others read it as the most matter-of-fact declaration of devotion imaginable. Thirty years in, love does not always look like a movie. Sometimes it looks like the person you trust most in the world, who happens to still be watching your old TV show in the evenings.
Julian: The Baby Who Was Already Famous Before He Was Born
Three years after the wedding, Lisa fell pregnant while filming season four of Friends. Rather than hide the bump, the writers worked it directly into the show’s storyline, giving Phoebe the role of surrogate mother for her brother’s triplets. It is one of the most beloved storylines from the entire run of the show, and it existed entirely because Lisa Kudrow was expecting a baby with her French advertising executive husband.
The Friends cast made sure little Julian was included from the very beginning. Before every episode, the six cast members would gather backstage and say their good luck ritual to each other. When Lisa was pregnant, they added him in: “Love you, love you, love you, little Julian.” They already knew it was a boy.
Julian Murray Stern was born on May 7, 1998. He is now 27 years old, graduated from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2021, and has been quietly carving out his own path in film and television ever since.
The twist in his story? Despite growing up on the set of one of the most-watched shows in television history, Julian has openly admitted he is not actually a fan of Friends, preferring Game of Thrones instead. Lisa has told that story several times, always laughing, never once seeming bothered by it.
In late 2025, it was announced that Julian would make his television debut in the third and final season of The Comeback, his mother’s long-running HBO series, which is set to air in 2026. So the boy who was already in a TV show before he was even born is finally going to appear in one properly. And he is doing it alongside his mum.
For a man as private as Michel Stern, that must be a very satisfying moment to watch from the sidelines.
