Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys fell in love while playing married KGB spies on the FX drama "The Americans," but their secret romance was blown open when a burglar broke into Russell's Brooklyn home one night and stuffed some of her belongings into what turned out to be Rhys's backpack.
Police caught the burglar, and the district attorney's office wanted to stage a photo opportunity to return the couple's items on set. "They were like, 'Oh, we'd love to bring you your things back and present them to you on set and do a photograph for the D.A.,'" Rhys recalled during an April appearance on "Late Night With Seth Meyers." Russell, he said, tried to wave the officers off, telling them she would simply pick the items up herself at a precinct.
The officers came anyway. "God bless them," Rhys added, "and thank you for their service." Crew members quickly noticed that what police believed was Russell's bag actually belonged to the Welsh actor. "Lo, it came to pass that we were together," Rhys quipped. "Everyone found out, one clean sweep. Didn't have to hire a publicist, it was great."
A relationship that began in secret
The break-in happened in 2014, before the couple welcomed their now-10-year-old son, Sam. Russell also has son River, 19, and daughter Willa, 13, with her ex-husband, carpenter and contractor Shane Deary.
Russell's representative confirmed in early December 2013 that she and Deary had separated over the summer after six years of marriage. Weeks later, Russell and Rhys were photographed together looking close in Brooklyn, where both still live, sparking dating rumors.
Asked last year by The New Yorker how the relationship began, Russell, 50, said it happened "slowly." "With a lot of, kind of, 'Oh, we shouldn't. Oh, this is terrible, we shouldn't!'...Inevitably, a bottle of red wine would be opened."
Rhys, speaking on an August episode of the New York Times podcast "The Interview," said a previous on-set romance in his mid-20s "ended disastrously," leading him to swear off repeating it. When feelings resurfaced with Russell in his mid-30s, he thought, "Oh, no, this is happening again." Still, he said, "It wasn't something I was going to enter into lightly. But sometimes you can't fight it. It's ordained."
They had actually met years earlier
Rhys and Russell already knew each other before "The Americans," having met at a kickball-and-beer party in Los Angeles more than a decade before the show began. "I very drunkenly asked her for her number when she was a young, single, slip of a thing," Rhys said during a 2017 appearance on "Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen," noting he was 26 at the time.
Russell recalled realizing the connection during rehearsals for the show: after a sweaty fight-training session, Rhys told her they had met before, ten years earlier, at kickball. "As soon as he said that, I knew exactly what he meant and I opened my eyes, like, 'Oh! Of course I remember that,'" she said. Rhys shot back that she was "that buffoon that wouldn't stop calling."
Playing spies while falling in love
"The Americans" cast Rhys and Russell as Soviet KGB agents living undercover in the U.S. as a married couple with two children. Telling E! News in January 2013 when the FX drama premiered, Rhys said the two had to do a chemistry test for the roles. "The show kind of relies on our chemistry, or our lack of it, in the beginning," he said, promising the series would have "more twists and turns than a roller coaster."
The show's increasingly complicated plot included revealing sex scenes, even as the real-life couple's romance stayed hidden and Russell's actual pregnancy was camouflaged on screen rather than written into the story. Rhys told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that filming those scenes made him protective of Russell: "I get a little protective. I'm like, 'Can someone get her a f--kin' robe, please?! She's standing there naked, we've cut for five seconds, Jesus Christ.' And they're like, 'Dude, this is the fourth season.'"
Emmy history and an unfinished proposal
Both actors earned Emmy nominations for "The Americans" in 2016, 2017 and 2018. When Rhys won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the show's final season, he closed his acceptance speech by thanking "the woman who truly got me this award, who just stands in front of me every day and puts up with me," recounting that she had told him, "If you propose to me I will punch you clean in the mouth."
Despite the joke, the couple remain unmarried. Rhys told The Times in 2025 that they "literally haven't got round to marriage yet." In May, he told "Obsessed: The Podcast" that he felt bad only he won an Emmy for the show in 2018, saying of that year's winner, "Not to take away anything from Claire Foy from The Crown because she was incredible in that. I just wish Keri got it because she was so incredible."
Big night at the 2026 Emmys
Russell finally won her first Emmy, for "The Diplomat," in March. At the 2026 Emmys, held Sept. 14, she picked up her third lead actress in a drama series nomination for the show and was also nominated as a producer for Outstanding Drama Series.
Rhys had an even bigger night, winning Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for the Apple TV+ series "Widow's Bay" and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series for the Netflix series "The Beast in Me," making him the first male actor to win in all three major acting categories. He also won as an executive producer when "Widow's Bay," the most-nominated new series of the year with 19 nods, took Outstanding Comedy Series.
The couple have joked for years about award season pressure. At the 2019 Golden Globes, Rhys told E! News that being nominated together "keeps our relationship together," with Russell adding, "Thank God we don't have to break up." Backstage at this year's Emmys, Rhys said Russell had warned him, "If you win both, I'm not coming home with you." Asked by E! News if that meant he was free for the night, he replied, "I don't know if I'm free. Lonely, maybe."
