In the crazy world of Hollywood, it’s rare to find a marriage that actually stands the test of time. That’s what makes it so impressive that former Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio has been married to his high school sweetheart for 33 years!
“Without her and without the foundation and the family we established, ‘one foot in, one foot out’ would have been very, very difficult on my own,” Macchio, 59, told People Magazine. “Because there would not be balance.”
Macchio rose to international fame in 1984 when he played the teenage martial arts student Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid. Though he was playing a teenager, Macchio was actually 22 at the time, and he had met Phyllis seven years earlier at a cousin’s birthday party in his grandmother’s basement when he was 15 years-old.
“This is 1970 or whatever, so this is Cheez Doodles, 7Up, Tootsie Rolls, probably the Ruffles with onion dip,” he recalled with a laugh. “She was a friend of my cousin, and we just smiled and talked and danced a little. Probably the Hustle!”
Macchio and Phyllis are the parents to two children: Julie, 28, and Daniel, 25. Phyllis is a nurse practitioner who has been on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic over the past year, and her husband could not be more proud of her.
Macchio credits their longstanding union to “commitment.”
“It’s the belief through the easy times, through the tough times, whatever we encounter, that we are meant to be together,” he said of Phyllis. “We know that we will overcome all because we believe in that, the foundation of that.”
These days, Macchio is as busy as ever with his career, appearing in season 3 of his Netflix show “Cobra Kai,” which premiered on New Year’s Day.
“It’s exceeded my expectations,” Macchio told Yahoo News of the show. “Not that I didn’t feel we were making something great that was connecting to the original story, the nostalgia of the Karate Kid universe and paying homage to that and never losing sight of that. But to propel to this level on YouTube, break out in that way…
“The low expectations helped us, I think. The press and the media was like, ‘OK, they’re doing this now. Sure, no one has any original ideas, why not do this?’ So that was a good thing for us.”
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