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Sheryl Lee Ralph and her husband Vincent Hughes know what it takes to keep a marriage strong.
The Abbott Elementary star, 68, revealed that she and her husband — who celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in June — both try to follow one key rule when it comes to their relationship.
“Talk about it,” Ralph said, while chatting with PEOPLE about her PBS Kids’ show, Weather Hunters. “Do everything not to go to bed angry, and remember that as much as ‘I love you,’ ‘I always like you [is important too].’ ”
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She went on to say that communication is not only “key” to keeping a relationship together, but “is everything” to helping it continue to grow and flourish as well. “Without it, relationships don’t survive. They don’t survive,” she added.
Ralph also opened about her vow renewal with Hughes, 68, on the iconic Rocky Steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in July. She wore a classic white strapless dress by Monsoori Haute Couture — with an 80-foot-long shawl that cascaded down the museum’s 72 steps — as she made her way down.
She noted that her daughter, Ivy Coco, was her stylist for the big event and she helped coordinate several things with the wedding, including the “22 young ballerinas” that held and carried her “shawl.”
“Oh my God, the pageantry,” she recalled. “And then I received a gift and it simply said ‘be present.’ ”
“And to stand there, and look at my friends of all those years, to look at my husband. We’re still together, still happily married and it’s a good place to be, a very good place to be present,” she added.
Ralph previously quoted one of Rocky’s famous lines — “It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward” — to Vogue while describing the grand entrance at her vowel renewal, which took place on the same steps where the movie was filmed, and noted that it pertained to marriage too.
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“In marriage, we have so many things that happen in life,” she explained. “People live. People die. Relationships change. You change. Your partner changes. Your family, your immediate family, your extended family — there are changes in life.”
“And then there’s just the everyday of it. How are you able to get back up again and continue being together? I love that sentiment,” Ralph added.
