"Malcolm in the Middle"&x27;s Jane Kaczmarek on Marrying Her High School Love 50 Years After They Dated: &x27;Like a Fairytale&x27; (Exclusive) Brenton BlanchetFri, March 20, 2026 at 7:31 PM UTC 0 Jane Kaczmarek and Rusty Long at their July 5, 2025 wedding in Saukville, WI.Credit: Abbie Flanagan/Citrine Pine Photography Jane Kaczmarek is reflecting on her fullcircle love story The Malcolm in the Middle star caught up with PEOPLE about reconnecting with her highschool love, 50 years after they first dated She's starring in Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair, a revival of the early aught...
"Malcolm in the Middle"'s Jane Kaczmarek on Marrying Her High School Love 50 Years After They Dated: 'Like a Fairytale' (Exclusive)
Brenton BlanchetFri, March 20, 2026 at 7:31 PM UTC
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Jane Kaczmarek and Rusty Long at their July 5, 2025 wedding in Saukville, WI.Credit: Abbie Flanagan/Citrine Pine Photography -
Jane Kaczmarek is reflecting on her full-circle love story
The Malcolm in the Middle star caught up with PEOPLE about reconnecting with her high-school love, 50 years after they first dated
She's starring in Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair, a revival of the early aughts hit sitcom, which premieres April 10 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+
Jane Kaczmarek still gets giddy with excitement when she thinks back to her early days with her childhood love, Rusty Long.
He was "the big star" on their high school tennis team at Greendale High School in Greendale, Wisconsin and gave her his ID bracelet from their visit to the state fair (which she still has today). Basically, she says, she was "nuts about him."
As high-school romances often do theirs fizzled out when the pair went their separate ways after graduation. Long, 71, became a lawyer and still frequents the tennis court. Kaczmarek, 70, went to drama school and eventually landed the memorable role as one of TV's funniest sitcom moms, Lois in Malcolm in the Middle, which she's reprising for the show's Hulu revival next month.
They each also married and welcomed kids. Kaczmarek married actor Bradley Whitford and they welcomed three kids — Frances, 29, George, 26, and Mary Louisa, 23 — before they divorced in 2010. Long became a father of two himself, now with two grandsons (ages 7 and 11).
Lately, revisiting past connections has become a powerful trend for the actress. In 2024, when Kaczmarek returned to her hometown in Wisconsin for her 50th high school reunion, her best friend Connie asked if she wanted to see Long again. Kaczmarek tells PEOPLE she jumped at the opportunity.
They went out to dinner as a group, "and it was just immediate," Kaczmarek reveals. She couldn't deny it, the feelings she had for him reignited.
"There's one Linda Ronstadt song, 'I think I'm gonna love you for a long long time'" she tells PEOPLE of the 1970 hit. "I mean, for 50 years that song always took me back to Rusty Long."
Jane Kaczmarek in 1974; Rusty Long in 1972Credit: Seth Poppel/Yearbook Library(2)
That night, Long accompanied Kaczmarek home, said hello to her mother, and then, "we went in the living room that hasn't been redecorated since 1968 and just made out on the couch."
Soon, Kaczmarek and Long were spending three hours talking on the phone every night. They spoke of their favorite authors, movies, classical music (Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov in particular) and poetry. "I couldn't believe how interesting he'd become," she says. "I said to him, 'I could not make up a better man in my life right now than you.'"
That spark continued through February of 2025 in Pasadena, Calif., when the pair attended a Robert Burns-themed gathering filled with bagpipes, haggis and Scotch in honor of the Scottish poet. The host asked guests to make toasts, and when it was Long's turn, "Rusty said, 'I would like to toast to romance. I've been in love with Jane my entire life, and I want to ask her to marry me,'" Kaczmarek recalls. "It was heaven."
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Jane Kaczmarek and Rusty Long at their July 5, 2025 wedding in Saukville, WI.Credit: Abbie Flanagan/Citrine Pine Photography
After some convincing from fellow attendees, he did it right then and there. She said yes.
Kaczmarek's adult children are big fans of Long, too. They "loved him from the minute they met him," she explains, partly thanks to his Wisconsin charm. She also says, they wanted to see their mother in love. "Their father [Whitford] had gotten married a couple years earlier. And the thing children want, they really want their parent to be happy," Kaczmarek says.
All three children were in attendance for her July 5, 2025 wedding, along with Long's kids and grandkids, during a ceremony fittingly held in a barn in the Badger State.
Kaczmarek describes the scene as a "summer party" complete with a string quartet, the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, plenty of their childhood pals and other "Wisconsin stuff" ("walleye pike fish and the cheese curds and bratwurst").
Kaczmarek's daughters and Long's grandsons walk down the aisle with Ladybug leading the wayCredit: Abbie Flanagan/Citrine Pine Photography
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Now happily married, Kaczmarek and Long are splitting time between their home state and Pasadena. She's also reconnecting with someone else from her past — Lois, the lovable mom from the Fox hit, Malcolm in the Middle, which ran from 2000-2006. The role scored her seven consecutive Emmy noms and taught her a bit about love over the years, too.
"Trust your instincts," she says of what she's learned from Lois.
Jane Kaczmarek and Rusty Long share a kiss during their wedding ceremony on July 5, 2025.Credit: Abbie Flanagan/Citrine Pine Photography
As for what she's now taking away from this full-circle romance with Long: "You can be really corny because part of you is still feeling like a high school kid," Kaczmarek says.
"It's at that part of your life now where we both had other spouses. Our children are raised, our careers have gone well. It's like a fairy tale."
For more on Kaczmarek's family life both on and off screen, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday. Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair premieres April 10 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
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Source: Entertainment
Published: March 20, 2026 at 03:45PM on Source: PRIME TIME
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