Hilarie Burton Reveals the Secret to Her Long-Lasting Relationship With Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Tired of looking 'round rooms wondering what you gotta do to have a relationship like Hilarie Burton and Jeffrey Dean Morgan?

Well, the One Tree Hill alum—who started dating The Walking Dead actor a decade before they wed in 2019—is sharing her secrets to a successful marriage.

“Obviously communication is a very big deal and also anticipating that your partner is going to go through phases and changes,” Hilarie told E! News in an exclusive interview. “We both have gone through different professional phases where maybe we're super ambitious in one phase of our life, and then we're nesting in another phase of our life. And we try to work in tandem so that we're each compensating for each other.”

And part of where they’re going (sing it with us now) is knowing where they’re coming from.

“I'm certainly not the same person I was at 26,” the 42-year-old continued. “Now I’m like a warmer, more aggressive version and he seems to like that.”

Just like a tree, Hilarie and Jeffrey’s love has continued to grow. In fact, they’re celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary Oct. 5—though they’re marking the milestone about a week prior.   

“I'm going to see him next week to celebrate a little bit early,” the actress continued. “He's traveling for work, and so I'm going to see him for a whirlwind 24 hours and no one should expect to be in touch with us. It's kind of great.”

What’s also great is life on their upstate New York farm—which Hilarie calls her “little sanctuary”—with kids Augustus, 14, and George, 6.

“So my son is little me,” she shared of Gus. “He has gotten involved with everything in our community. He's doing a homecoming dance and he's in the school play and he is rowing crew. This child is busy. My daughter is the animal person at the farm. So I have my town kid and my country kid, and they balance each other really, really nicely. My son's taken to riding dirt bikes around the property with my husband, that's cool, and my daughter just wants to get outside and wrestle dogs.”

Not on Gus' list of hobbies: Watching Mom make out with other guys on old seasons of One Tree Hill.

"He saw one episode, and it's weird for him to see me kiss people. He doesn’t love that," Hilarie said. "But he does student council, and so we spent the entire summer watching teen movies from the '90s because kids now are just on phones and they don't know how to throw a party, they don't know how to make plans. And so, he wanted before he went into high school to learn what it's supposed to look like. And so I showed him all of these movies and the next step is One Tree Hill. Just what show can we show you that isn't mine? I’ll make him watch Dawson's.”

Still, she's loving this stage her son is in—noting “the teenage years are actually my favorite.”

“I got involved with PTSO at my son's school,” Hilarie revealed. “And so for any other parent out there, I highly recommend that. Even if your kid's like, ‘I don't want you here,’ get involved because they need people in their lives who are not authority figures that are just loving members of the community."

And it's helped them find common ground.

"In hanging out with these preteens and teenagers every day, I think they're no different than us," the A Christmas Wish star explained. "We're going through hormone changes, they're going through hormone changes. Our workload is insane, their workload is insane. And so I think all those conflicts that can sometimes happen between parents and their children can really be eased when we realize we're in the same boat, we're doing the same thing.”

In fact, Hilarie said she’s “heard people refer to perimenopause and menopause as a second adolescence, and that really does seem accurate.” Now, she's partnering with Olly to promote its Mellow Menopause supplements and sharing her own experience with perimenopause.

“So many people reacted by saying, ‘You're too young, you're too young,’” Hilarie recalled. “And so my job now is to come out and be a megaphone and say, ‘You're not too young. If you're having the symptoms, it is starting.’ And so the sooner you manage it, the sooner you can just keep kicking ass and you don't have to go through that pitfall of trying to keep it a secret. I think a lot of women fall prey to that and we don't have to.”

Because Hilarie doesn’t want to be anything other than what she's been tryna be lately. And her husband loves her just as she is. Keep reading to relive their years-long romance.

- Reporting by Nikaline McCarley

So how did Jeffrey and Hilarie first cross paths? It all started in 2009 thanks to the actor's Supernatural co-star Jensen Ackles, who organized a blind double date for Jeffrey, Hilarie, himself and wife Danneel Ackles. 

"I [got lit]. We all did. We ended up back at my house drinking shots of tequila," Morgan recalled during a 2015 interview with the Huffington Post. Jeffrey and Hilarie would make their red carpet debut as a couple in 2010. 

The duo shocked Hollywood in 2010 when it was revealed that the One Tree Hill actress had given birth to a baby boy named Augustus. A source told E! News at the time, "She told friends about her pregnancy back in August [2009] after she had spent a lot of time with Jeffrey on location in New Mexico."

At the 2011 premiere of Breaking Dawn: Part 1, the new parents gave a rare interview to E! News about their bundle of joy. "He just said 'no' for the first time, which is f--ked up," Jeffrey teased. "In one week it's just like, 'No, no, no!'"

"But everything is a first," he gushed. "It's been spectacular... a lot of not sleeping, and then our one adult night we come here. This is our date. Can you believe it?"

Starting in 2014, they began covertly referring to each other as "husband" and "wife." Despite reports of an undercover wedding, The Walking Dead star denied his leading lady had in fact walked down the aisle to become Mrs. Jeffrey Dean Morgan. 

Jeffrey and Hilarie left the hustle and bustle of Hollywood for a more quaint lifestyle in the town of Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, New York. There they live on working farm, and as Hilarie explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2014, she spends most days in a "Carhartt flannel and covered in paint and sawdust and muck boots." 

The stars aligned in 2015 when Hilarie was cast on his CBS series Extant. He told Zap2It of the coincidental co-starring, "When I took the job the deal was, ‘We'll get you home as much as possible,' and that just hasn't worked out. But Hilarie got a job on Extant, which was fantastic. You'll see her a couple of times throughout the season, so that's one way we've been able to keep the family sort of together."

At the 2016 premiere of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Hilarie planted a sweet smooch on her handsome date for the evening. 

A little-known fact about Jeffrey and Hilarie, they co-own a candy store with Paul Rudd and his wife! 

Samuel's Sweet Shop is located in their hometown, and as the actor told HuffPost, "A friend of ours, who owned it for 20-plus years passed away tragically... We own a candy store in upstate New York and we have great coffee and great chocolates."

The private pair stepped out at the 2017 Golden Globes oozing Hollywood glam. Discussing his villainous Walking Dead character with ET, she shared, "It's made him good cop at home. He gets all his bad cop stuff out of the way at work and then he comes home and he's happy dad."

When Gus turned 7, his mama wrote on Instagram, "Gus is a Titanic freak, so went to Reagan Presidential Library for the Titanic exhibit. Such a great day. Birthday adventures with my boy!"

At the 2017 Emmy Awards, he hinted that Hilarie was pregnant again. They ultimately confirmed that their family was growing, and Jeffrey let it slip that they're expecting a little girl!

In March 2018, Jeffrey confirmed that their baby girl had arrived. "Hey y'all... baby gal morgan is spectacular," the actor tweeted. "We just respecting her wishes for laying low a bit longer. But we super appreciate all the well wishes n stuff. Thank you. Xojdhilgusandbabygal."

"I just want to put it out there that WE GOT MARRIED! For real," Hilarie announced on Instagram in Oct. 2019. "We've lived as husband and wife for a decade. We've built a family, and a farm and found our community. For years, publications have reported that we got married in 2014 or 2015 and that I've been married and divorced before. All untrue. But WE knew our truth. So it felt silly to try and correct anything."