Some husbands buy a ring. Adam Shulman sat down with a jeweler and argued about one until it looked like the woman he wanted to marry. That small, stubborn detail tells you most of what you need to know about the man who has stood next to Anne Hathaway since 2008, and who, this October, is waiting with her for their third child.
They met through mutual friends, and by 2009 they were turning up together at events. “We hit it off immediately,” Hathaway told Vogue in 2010. Fourteen years of marriage later, the couple is still one of the quieter success stories in a town that usually prefers loud ones. I have a theory about why, and it starts with the fact that Shulman’s day job involves a workbench.
Who Adam Shulman is when he is not on a red carpet
Shulman co-owns the jewelry company James Banks Design with designer Heidi Nahser Fink. He did some acting first: his IMDb credits include The West Wing, American Dreams and The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning. Then design became the real work. He also produces from time to time, including Hathaway’s 2014 film Song One.
The jewelry business has a romantic origin story of its own. Fink was the master metalsmith in the prop department of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and Hathaway asked her to make a Christmas present for Shulman. According to TODAY, Hathaway inspired the brand’s butterfly pieces, and a vintage-style lightbulb pendant came out of something she once said to him. (Most of us get a mug.)
Here is my read: a partner who makes things by hand, outside the audition-and-awards cycle, is a partner who isn’t competing with you for the same spotlight. That counts for more than any amount of red-carpet chemistry.
The ring he designed himself
When Shulman proposed in November 2011, the emerald-cut diamond on Hathaway’s finger was his own idea, made with Kwiat. “He had a very strong vision for what he knew Anne would love,” Greg Kwiat told People at the time. The couple celebrated with family and friends a few months later.
What I like about this story is not the size of the stone, which the internet has measured to death. It is that the jeweler’s quote is about what Anne would love, not what would photograph well.
A Big Sur wedding for about 150 friends
They married in September 2012 in Big Sur, California, at a private ceremony with roughly 150 guests, as British Vogue reported. Hathaway wore Valentino. The plan was to keep it small and personal. The plan lasted until the first photos reached the tabloids, which is how plans tend to go in Hollywood.
Starting over after 2008
Context matters here. In 2008 Hathaway’s previous boyfriend, the Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri, was arrested and later pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges; a judge sentenced him to four and a half years in prison. Shulman came into her life that same year. I won’t pretend to know what went on in her head, and she has never handed the press a tidy “he healed me” quote. But the timing speaks for itself: what she chose next was steady, private and built over years.
In December 2023 she described the marriage on The Drew Barrymore Show in words I find more convincing than any grand declaration: “We’re really just lucky that we keep growing together.”
Two sons, and a “buzzer beater” on the way
Their son Jonathan was born in March 2016 and his brother Jack in 2019. Neither pregnancy was simple: when she announced the second, Hathaway wrote, “For everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line.” Shulman, for his part, told People in 2020: “I love changing diapers! It’s the best.”
On June 19, 2026, Hathaway, 43, posted an Instagram video set to Barbara Lewis’s “Baby I’m Yours,” showing her baby bump, with the caption “x Baby, I’m yours x.” Later, on Late Night with Seth Meyers, she said they were so shocked that it worked, “so we’re calling this one our buzzer beater.”
The baby is expected this month. After the Verity premiere on October 2, closing out a year with The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Odyssey and Mother Mary among her releases, she told Entertainment Tonight: “I’m going to vanish in a plume of smoke, and you’re not going to see me until you have to.” Reports say she will be back to film the Days of Thunder sequel with Tom Cruise in 2027.
That clip from The Graham Norton Show, in which she admits to “hangry” fights with her husband, is still the best proof that this marriage is not a press release.
My take
Hollywood loves a fairy tale, but this one is mostly about craftsmanship: a man who designed a ring around what one specific woman would love, and then kept showing up for the unglamorous parts. Eighteen years on, with a third child about to arrive, the ring is still the right metaphor. Some things are made carefully by hand, and they last.
Sources
- Anne Hathaway on Instagram, September 2026
- Anne Hathaway on Instagram: pregnancy announcement, June 19, 2026
- The Graham Norton Show: Anne Hathaway on “hangry” fights with her husband (YouTube)
- NBC News: Anne Hathaway announces she is pregnant with her third child
- AOL: Anne Hathaway announces surprise pregnancy with third child
- Yahoo: Anne Hathaway’s “buzzer beater” remark on Late Night with Seth Meyers
- The Ticker: Hathaway to Entertainment Tonight on stepping back after Verity
- CBS News: Raffaello Follieri sentenced to four and a half years (2008)
- TODAY: Who is Adam Shulman? What to know about Anne Hathaway’s husband
