Feature  

From Showmance to Romance

Jessica Lee Goldyn and Tony Yazbeck, Van Hughes and Leslie McDonel, and Daniel Breaker and Kate Whoriskey share how they made their onstage relationships work offstage.

Tony Yazbeck and Jessica Lee Goldyn (© Joseph Marzullo/ WENN)

Theater is full of "showmances": hot and heavy relationships that end as soon as the show's final curtain comes down. But a few romances nurtured in the sultry glow of the footlights have grown into love stories that would have made even Percy Bysshe Shelley reach for the pen. TheaterMania recently spoke to three couples -- actors Jessica Lee Goldyn and Tony Yazbeck; actors Van Hughes and Leslie McDonel; and actor Daniel Breaker and director Kate Whoriskey -- who met doing a show together, but are still living happily after.

Jessica Lee Goldyn and Tony Yazbeck
"Something happens when we dance together," says actress Jessica Lee Goldyn about her fiancé Tony Yazbeck, with whom she has starred in the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, last year's City Encores! production of On the Town, and the Maine State Music Theater's current revival of Crazy For You. But Goldyn fell for Yazbeck before they even took their first steps together. "I saw him at a photo shoot for A Chorus Line, and there was just like these little hearts around his head. I knew right away," says Goldyn.

However, the pair didn't get engaged during the show's run. The big moment happened at the dinner and dance club Swing 46, while Yazbeck was playing Tulsa in the 2008 revival of Gypsy. "We decided not to get engaged until we were out of the show and we were living our own lives," she says. "Everything is romanticized when you're in a show. You can get fooled like it could be real, but it's really not. It happens a lot."

The pair now lives together in Hell's Kitchen, but they won't be there together much in the coming months. After Crazy For You closes, Yazbeck will go to the Pittsburgh CLO to star in Barry Manilow's Copacabana and then to Chicago for the Goodman Theatre's production of Animal Crackers, while Goldyn is still seeking her next job. Still, the couple will never go more than two weeks without seeing each other. "Working on Broadway you have to set your priorities straight," says Goldyn. "This is our business and we are so passionate about it, but our priority is with each other and making it work."

 

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