James Brolin Admits The Best Marital Advice That Keeps His Relationship With Barbra Streisand Strong

Really, the success of the marriage might still be a surprise to some, not least because of Brolin’s two previous divorces. It might even be a surprise to Brolin himself. In 2018 Entertainment Tonight asked him what the secret of his and Streisand’s marriage was, and he answered, “I don’t know, because nobody trains you. This is my third time — third marriage.”

Brolin went on, “I picked difficult situations the first two times, but I think you learn with each one.” And he was also a big fan of marriage counseling, he revealed. “Bring in a referee, talk it over, and I swear to you, it will dispel by the end of the session, each time,” he told the outlet. “Sometimes in a tough marriage, it’s tough to talk, but if you do, it works!”

Did Brolin mean his previous marriages had been tough, or his marriage to Streisand? Luckily, it seemed like it wasn’t the latter. Brolin went on, “When she’s busy, she’s really focused, and part of our good relationship is that I understand that. And if I come to her with something important and she says, ‘I don’t have time right now,’ she doesn’t have time, period. That’s the way the mind works. You gotta focus.”

Time, and making it for each other, is always a major factor in a celebrity marriage. But what about the other thing that comes with celebrity: money, and lots of it? Brolin revealed in 2015 that careful money management was a factor in his successful marriage, too. He told HuffPost Live, “We’ve bifurcated, and I love it that way. I have my own money and she has her own money.”

And then Brolin added, “I certainly didn’t want to be subject to anyone. This is my third marriage, and I know what trouble can come out of marriage, so I didn’t want any reason that I would ever have to be either divorced or married again.” His two failed relationships have seemingly taken quite a toll on him — but that was why he’s worked so hard to maintain what he has with Streisand.

Streisand herself also experienced a failed marriage before meeting Brolin. She had once been the wife of actor Elliot Gould, but they split up in 1969 and officially divorced in 1971. Decades later, in 2012, Gould told The Independent, “It was difficult to be married to someone who was married to their success. I was very young, she was very young, and we went as far as we could together.”

Streisand herself agreed. She admitted that she hadn’t worked as hard at the marriage as she should have done. In 1970 she told Time magazine, “It must have been very difficult for him. Marriages between people who are self-involved [are] hard. It’s safer for actors not to be married to one another.” And yet, of course, she and Brolin are both actors.

It seems Streisand never wanted to fall for another actor, but that’s exactly what she did. It certainly wasn’t an instant attraction when she first met Brolin in 1996, though. She recalled to W magazine in 2016, “I met him at a dinner and expected a bearded mountain-man type, and he had cut off all his hair and was clean-shaven. I asked him, “Who screwed up your hair?” He later told me that’s when he fell in love with me.”

Brolin may have been in love, but many of the people around him were shocked that he’d pursue the famous singer. After all, at that point, Streisand had a reputation for being a diva and worse. Allegedly, she’d had an affair with actor Sydney Chaplin while still married to Gould, and after it ended badly, she bit him on the neck live on stage. Ouch.

Streisand’s biographer James Spada claimed to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper in 1995, “… she says she’s in the worst position to find a man. A lot are intimidated by her. She says if a man even says hello to her at a party, she is way ahead of the game… I think she’d be very tough to be married to.”

Yet Brolin was ready and willing to take on that toughness. He proposed to Streisand, it’s rumored, around four or five times. Her refusals didn’t put him off, and eventually, come 1997, she finally accepted. There was no official announcement to the press, but exactly two years after their romance began they were married in a top-secret ceremony at Streisand’s estate.

Streisand was allegedly super nervous during the run-up to the wedding, according to People magazine, canceling and redoing some things just days before she was to say “I do.” Her friend Marge Tabankin told the outlet, “She had that normal anxiety.” But yes, of course, she went through with it — though she and Brolin did sign a prenuptial agreement beforehand.

It was by all accounts an absolutely magical ceremony. People magazine reported that Brolin told his guests after the knot was tied, “I can’t tell you how lucky I am that this would happen to me so late in life. Every night is a new adventure. Sleeping is a waste of time. I can’t wait to see her again in the morning.”

In 2018, not long before their 20th wedding anniversary, Brolin and Streisand revealed some other secrets of their “rock solid” marriage to Closer Weekly magazine. Brolin cheerfully explained, “I’m easygoing, but I’m very opinionated. And she likes to control everything. I’m laconic and never get anything done. But she’ll zero in on one thing after the other, so that’s what makes ours a great marriage.”

The magazine observed that Streisand “seemed to be an unlikely match for the dashing actor when they met on a blind date in 1996,” and Streisand agreed. “You know, opposites attract,” she said. “You can’t have perfection, [but] perfection is imperfection! When you love each other, you have to accept each other’s flaws as well as gifts.”

That same year, Brolin did an interview with Fox News and speculated that the stars themselves might have been instrumental in keeping his relationship with Streisand so solid. He said, “If you look at Cancer and Taurus — not that I’m into astrology, but I’ll click on that if I’m on the computer — almost every time, it says, ‘You guys are magic together.’”

Brolin mused that being “so opposite that you’re able to work it out” was what made he and his wife such a “great team.” Brolin went on with a laugh, “I think we’re both very opposite and very good negotiators. She sees a color that’s one shade and I say, ‘No, it’s another color.’ And then we are able to negotiate around it.”

Furthermore, Brolin brought up the old issue of how he and Streisand were possibly able to make time for their relationship with so many responsibilities in their lives. “We both long to come home to see each other and yet we both love to be in the mix of things at our age,” he said. “We should be retired and on rocking chairs.”

Brolin in some ways had the same problem Gould once had — that Streisand was married to her work — but Brolin could live with that. He told Fox News, “She is so intent on what she’s doing. As for me, I’m busy all the time. But we come home to each other. The evenings we’re always together. The days are just us running and holding our pants up.”

And Brolin once again sung his “diva” wife’s praises to chat show The Talk in 2021, chatting about how he continued to pursue Streisand even after his friends told him not to. “I heard it over, that she’s a tough one,” he said. But that was what he wanted. “I like women who say their piece, and I’m a calming factor, and [Streisand] gets me up and doing things I wouldn’t normally accomplish.”

Brolin also spoke about how he and Streisand had coped during the COVID-19 lockdown, a situation so stressful it had naturally driven many couples to the brink. “A lot of people, their marriages haven’t gone well during these 15 months,” Brolin said. “We’ve literally fallen in love over this period of time, just being stuck together every day and making it work.”

This meant surprising each other with gifts from time to time, as well. Brolin told The Talk co-host Elaine Welteroth that “every once in a while when it’s not expected” he would buy his wife “a good piece of jewelry. And she’s pretty picky, so they’re not all what she would’ve picked out, but every once in a while I score.”

The pair even had to celebrate their 24th wedding anniversary during the 2020 lockdown. That’s no easy feat, but they made that work as well. Streisand posted a throwback picture of her and Brolin’s big wedding on Instagram and posted the words, “There’s no one I’d rather be locked up with than you honey — can’t believe it’s been 24 years together! Happy anniversary.”

And when times of stress did cause them to lose tempers at each other, Brolin told The Talk’s co-host Sheryl Underwood, they were able to overcome it. He said, “Neither one of us have ever gone out the door [after] an argument and we are good at talking things out. And 23 years is better than ever, I must say.”

Perhaps the true secret of the Brolin-Streisand marriage lies in one of the words Brolin mentioned before — ‘negotiate.’ When People questioned him in 2022 as to how they’d made it work for so long, he answered not with another “I don’t know” but with, “I think everybody needs to be a negotiator. Everybody needs to have patience and know when to take a walk.”

Brolin mused that people in a relationship had to be “understanding [of] where your rages and your fire comes from.” He went on, “Knowing that they will calm down and you can negotiate. I don’t think anybody’s immune to that no matter how great lovers look over at that table, let’s say.” And he and Streisand have always been open about being vulnerable to it.

Brolin then revealed something that wasn’t previously public knowledge — that it had actually been one of his co-stars who offered up the advice about learning to negotiate. That was Connie Sellecca, who had played his love interest in the show Hotel during the 1980s. He said she had “taught me something that I never did, but was the greatest idea ever.”

Sellecca’s idea was, “Call a shrink six months before you’re married and both of you sit there with him. So that once you’re married, if you ever need a tune-up, it’s not an issue with one of the people. [Otherwise] it’s always one of the people say[ing], ‘We need to go see such and such,’ and the other one says, ‘I’m not going,’ and that ruins everything.”

Brolin concluded, “When [Sellecca] got married for the second time, she said, ‘Okay, buster, there’s not even a chance until we sit with a shrink... for six months. You can go once a week, once a month.’ She didn’t care as long as they’d broken the ice to do that and would continue. They’ve been married for 35 years.” And now, Brolin and Streisand are approaching that milestone as well.