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John Travolta and Kelly Preston had a love-filled marriage up until the day the actress died in July 2020.
The longtime couple met in 1987 while working on 1989’s The Experts. “I see, no lie, coming across the hall with his two dogs, this really hot guy,” Preston recalled of their first encounter while speaking to Us Weekly and other reporters in 2018. “Then he stops and says hello. And I was like, ‘Oh s***. Kill me now.’ You know, like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Travolta and Preston got engaged on New Year’s Eve in 1990 and tied the knot twice the following year. They welcomed son Jett in 1992 and daughter Ella in 2000. Their youngest son, Benjamin, was born in 2010 — the year after Jett died at 16 after experiencing a seizure.
Preston died in July 2020 after having secretly battled breast cancer for two years. She was 57.
In the wake of her passing, Travolta posted a loving tribute in his wife’s honor on Instagram. “It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my beautiful wife Kelly has lost her two-year battle with breast cancer,” he wrote. “She fought a courageous fight with the love and support of so many. My family and I will forever be grateful to her doctors and nurses at MD Anderson Cancer Center, all the medical centers that have helped, as well as her many friends and loved ones who have been by her side.”
Years after her mom’s passing, Ella paid tribute to Preston on Mother’s Day 2025 with throwback photos of her parents.
“Happy Mother’s Day to the strongest, most beautiful, loving, funny, smart woman I know,” Ella wrote via her Instagram Story. “I love you.”
Scroll through the gallery below to see the twosome’s love throughout the years.
