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Last week, we talked about Fred Armisen’s appearance on David Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast. Fred talked about how, although his seven year relationship with Natasha Lyonne didn’t end up working out, he felt that it was still a successful one because they parted ways as friends. I had mentioned that between Nastasha and his short-lived marriage to Elisabeth Moss Fred’s love life kinda intrigued me. I’m here for gossip about it. Someone in the comments had asked what the deal was with Fred and actress Riki Lindhome. Well, ask and ye shall receive, because Riki just did an exclusive interview with People where she revealed that she and Fred have been married for just over two years. Riki also explained that their son, Keaton, was born via surrogacy just after they started dating and exactly three months before they got married.
Two years ago on June 1, Wednesday actress Riki Lindhome and Saturday Night alum Fred Armisen secretly tied the knot. The couple had known each other for 15 years, but it wasn’t until they started filming Wednesday together in 2020 in Romania that something changed. Each time Lindhome thought about it, her heart overruled her brain. “I could tell I was having feelings, but then I was like, ‘Well, I can’t say anything because I’m about to have a baby,” Lindhome, 45, says exclusively to PEOPLE at her studio in Los Angeles.
After several years of failed IVF treatments and her plans to adopt fell through, Lindhome decided to have a child via surrogacy and a donated sperm and egg. She welcomed her son Keaton on March 1, 2022, while dating Armisen, 57, who was still filming abroad. Ultimately, she didn’t know if this was something he wanted for their future together.
“He didn’t get to meet Keaton until three weeks after he was born because he was still working. And I said, ‘All I want is the truth. If you feel in your gut that’s not for you, it doesn’t make you a jerk. I’m not mad at you,” she told him. “I said, ‘I still think you’re the best. I just want you to really feel what you feel. And then be honest about it because it’s a big life-altering thing.’ And he said, ‘Okay, okay.’”
Lindhome didn’t want to pressure her boyfriend. After all, they had only been dating a few weeks. “I told him, ‘So you just tell me what your heart says, and he said ‘Yes.’ It was just insta-family, basically,” she says, laughing.
While the two worked together on set for two months, Lindhome wanted to tell Armisen how she felt. “I knew that I was starting to have feelings for him, and I wanted to go on a date. That’s what I knew. So I was like, ‘Okay, let’s explore,’ she remembers. “Then it unfolded naturally over time. I wasn’t like, ‘You’re the dad.’ I was like, ‘I want to have dinner with you.’ My thought was, ‘I want to kiss you. I want to see you.’ Then it just kept going.”
Two weeks before Keaton was born on March 1, 2022, she told Armisen that she loved him. “It was weird, crazy timing,” she says. With them, their level of vulnerability increased gradually. Lindhome barely noticed they had entered into intimate territory until they were already there.
“We were friends for so long that it just happened fast. We had one dinner and then it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s see where this goes.’ It was surprising. I would say it was more of a shock to him. He did not see it coming at all.”
After the birth, she moved into Armisen’s home with Keaton to start their family life. Three months later, the couple got married. “I was ready to date him, I didn’t know what it would turn into,” she says.
“I thought maybe I would be a single mom with a boyfriend. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t even know if he was interested at first — I didn’t know anything. But it was a natural evolution,” she continues. “Then we got married in a courthouse. It’s not a secret, but we didn’t really tell people. We didn’t announce it or anything. And we thought people would hear about it eventually. And that’s what happened, one friend at a time.”
On their wedding day, Lindhome wore a white sundress she bought from the Glendale Galleria mall at Macy’s and Armisen wore a suit. Their 3-month-old son Keaton joined them for the ceremony along with one friend as a witness. “I didn’t even tell my mom,” admits Lindhome. “I never wanted to get married. I am not a wedding person. It’s not for me. But this was just for us. We also didn’t want to hurt people’s feelings by not having a wedding — and we didn’t want to get pressured into having one. We just wanted to be like, ‘Guess what we did a few months ago?’”
Lindhome says the couple kept it simple. There was no engagement and they picked out the rings themselves. But their jewelry didn’t arrive on time, so they had to wear temporary ones for the ceremony. The two picked a random Wednesday afternoon to get married, so they could honor the time they fell in love on set.
“The wedding was three minutes long and then we got some ice cream,” she says.
Congrats to the Armisen-Lindhome family. Hey, it may not have been the most conventional way of doing things, but sometimes, life is not that cut and dry. I’ve known people who married soon after they started dating and they’re still together, decades later. Given that Fred has said that his marriage with Elisabeth ended so poorly because he cheated on her, we all wondered last week whether or not he had actually “changed.” Sometimes, having a child can really force someone to grow up and put others first. I’m willing to give Fred the benefit of the doubt. Clearly, Riki is very happy with their unconventional little insta-family. Sometimes, we get lucky and the Universe brings us just what we needed at the exact right time.
My husband and I got married like this. We got rings from a street vendor and walked to city hall. Then we went to a friend’s who was having a party. It was an amazing day. I never thought I’d get married, never wanted it so I completely understand where Lindhome is coming from.
Genuinely happy for Riki. She seems thrilled, that’s awesome.
How nice for Fred that he got his insta-family after pressuring women he got pregnant to have abortions.
My sentiments exactly.
She’ll always be Ramona Nowitzki.
YES! I looked her up in IMDb to make sure it was her. I thought she was terrific in The Big Bang Theory, and so adorable with Sheldon (Jim Parsons).
omg. what a cutie!
Hum, for some reason my gut says “stay far away from Fred.”
Yeah… Has he ever dated someone that wasn’t at least a decade younger?
Wow! Congrats to them. Sounds like they’ve known each other a long time and things finally clicked.
More and more I see the appeal in two people just going and getting married like that, simple and personal, no huge party and all the stress and decisions.
Good luck to them. An article popped up the other day after the one here, that was all things he’s said about having relationships.
In the past, shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth moss, he said he has a 1-2 year timeline of being in love and then one day he wakes up and sees them as a person and the magic is gone and he acts terrible to drive them away. Think about how many effed up things there are in that sentence. Sees them as a person and its over.
Anyway, maybe he’s always seen her as a person and so this will work. Maybe he’s pulling a Hugh Grant of some kind.
It was worse really what he said previously. He literally lovebombs women, commits and moves in with them quickly, and then after a few years, he looks at them like they are “strangers,” intentionally retreats to hobbies, being very distant to the relationship, passive-aggressively forcing the women to move on. He said he was an awful boyfriend and awful husband. I mean, he sees them as strangers? He can be a very cruel man to women and always just enjoyed the chase.
While he acknowledges that his ending with longtime partner Natasha Lyonne was amicable, making him realize that he had developed some growth and maturity, I doubt he has changed all that much with character traits like his. I hope Riki wasn’t some rebound after his relationship with Natasha ended and that he will sabotage this relationship. The beginning of settling in at lightening speed certainly follows his MO.
I dated a guy just like this. Love bomb then passive aggressive then gone. I found out later he did this with all of his girlfriends. One even sold her condo to move in with him – at his insistence – and then, out of nowhere, woke up one morning and asked her to move out. She literally had no where to go. I dodged a bullet…
😬
This makes me sound very old, because I am very old – but she looks like Faith Ford from Murphy Brown. But with no makeup.
I’m old too b/c now that you point it out I can’t not see it!
🎯
Umm this timeline is confusing w Natasha lyonne relationship? She announced their break up in April 2022, which imagine means it was earlier but…riki started filming/falling for him in 2020? An I missing something?
Natasha said that their relationship fell apart because she wanted a pool … IN 2020! Sounds like it was a lot of things. It doesn’t seem like Natasha feels like a wronged woman.