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Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance: From "Boring" First Date to Lasting Marriage

Aired on 02/14/2007 | CC
Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance say that when they first met, in the early '80s at graduate school, it wasn't exactly love at first sight. Angela remembers Courtney as being "alluring"; Courtney doesn't remember Angela at all. They crossed paths again years later, when Angela was in a play with Courtney's then-girlfriend, but, again, no sparks. The future love birds would not enter each other's life again until 1994, when they chanced across each other while out with friends.

Somehow, Angela and Courtney ended up on a first date. It did not go well. Angela found Courtney to be "kind of boring." Yet, over the subsequent weeks, love began to stir between the two actors.

It was their first kiss that finally sealed the deal. "It was truly reminiscent of my first puppy love kisses," Angela wrote in the couple's 2007 book, Friends: A Love Story. "I got pinpricks and chills up the back of my thighs and across my butt, up my neck, across my scalp."

Here, in this 2007 Oprah Show interview, Angela and Courtney speak candidly about Cupid's many near misses—and one direct hit—that would lead to a decadeslong marriage.