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| Kirsten Storms & Brandon Barash are married, and expecting a daughter. |
Storms has played Maxie since 2005, with a one year leave of absence staring in September 2011 as she battled endometriosis. She headlined our Most Fascinating People of 2011 list and returned to GH in 2012. Barash joined the cast of GH as Johnny Zacchara in 2007 and played the role until earlier this year.
The two had been publicly dating, regularly tweeting about their romantic adventures, but the marriage came as a surprise to many. As did the revelation that Storms is expecting a baby girl.
“We’re having a little girl in January,” Barash told People. ”It’s been the most amazing couple of months of our lives. We kept things quiet because of everything that can go wrong during the first trimester. Kirsten did have a rocky [time] and we were in and out of the hospital.”
“We talked about wanting to have kids and Kirsten was told she could try hormone therapy," he explained. "It was pretty bleak as far as the probability of her being able to get pregnant … but then we got back from a trip to Amsterdam and discovered we were expecting. We calculated that we conceived the baby in [GH star] Tony Geary's guest room!”
As for how the pregnancy will impact Maxie's storyline on GENERAL HOSPITAL, head writer Ron Carlivati jokingly told Soap Opera Digest the pregnancy would not be written into the show.
"Given that Maxie is in labor on screen, no, we will not be writing it in [laughs]!"
The GH cast features two other real-life couples at the moment. Chad Duell (Michael) and Kristen Alderson (Kiki) are portraying romantic angst on the show but seem quite happy outside the soap. Bryan Craig (Morgan) and Kelly Thiebaud (Britt, better known as "The Britch") are not involved in the same fictional storyline in Port Charles but are dating for real. There's also Rebecca Herbst (Elizabeth) who is married to former GH actor Michael Saucedo (Juan).
With every new storyline or real-life happening, We Love Soaps looks back at history to see if the events of today have happened before or if there are any lessons to be learned. In this case, we know actors on daytime soap operas have been falling in love off-camera since the very beginning, most famously Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes from DAYS OF OUR LIVES, who have now been married nearly 40 years.
There are way too many examples of co-stars-turned-real-life couples to name them all but a few include LOVE OF LIFE's Toni Bull and the late Gene Bua, ALL MY CHILDREN's Justin Bruening and Alexa Havins, ONE LIFE TO LIVE's James and Kassie DePaiva, and THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS' Thad Luckinbill and Amelia Heinle. AS THE WORLD TURNS may own with record with several happy couples that are still together to this day including Justin Deas and Margaret Colin, Jon and Kelley Menighan Hensley, and Maura West and Scott DeFreitas.
Many, probably most, on-set romances turned out to be short-term such as DAYS' Deidre Hall and Quinn Redeker in the early '80s. And then there are the scandalous hookups between co-stars that were married to other people at the time. Some of those affairs actually resulted in new lifelong relationships. Others wreaked havoc on their soaps as well as the personal lives of the actors involved. But we'll keep those skeletons in the closet.
As for Storms and Barash, we predict a long and happy life together with a baby girl that is obviously going to be beautiful. Congratulations to the happy couple on their marriage and bundle of joy!
Now, with all this personal stuff out of the way, let's get back to Maxie Jones. What is going to happen to her baby? And The Britch's baby? And what will Dante and Lulu have to say about it? After a couple of shaky months GENERAL HOSPITAL is back on track and thoroughly entertaining again. Live-tweet with us weekdays at 2 p.m. ET at @WeLoveSoapsTV using hashtag #GH.
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