Homemade slippers sealed the deal when it came to Betty Gilpin knowing Cosmo Pfeil was the one for her.
While dating, the couple — who met on set — spent Thanksgiving with her parents, who lived in a no-shoes home.
“In the midst of a loud-talking contest with my father (their one Venn diagram overlap) about wiper fluid, my father gestured an apology to my date’s bare hobbit feet having to spend the holiday naked and cold in our no-shoes home,” she recalled in her 2022 book, All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns. “Realizing that all of us had aging Christmas Walmart ‘house socks,’ a look formed in his blue eyes that I could later identify as Must Do Immediate Elaborate Inconvenient Project to Fix Social Situation.”
Pfeil went under her parents’ kitchen sink and used paper grocery bags and blue duct tape to craft homemade slippers for the occasion, seemingly impressing Gilpin’s father.
“This! Is a man! A man with solutions!” her father said, clapping Pfeil on the back. Despite embarrassing Gilpin, the move worked and the two went on to tie the knot in 2016. Gilpin and Pfeil have since welcomed two daughters: Mary in 2020 and their younger child in 2024.
So, who is Betty Gilpin’s husband? Here is everything to know about Cosmo Pfeil and his relationship with the actress.
He is an actor, director and nurse
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Pfeil attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he got a bachelor’s degree in fine and studio arts.
After graduating in 2000, Pfeil landed a role in the 2004 film Company K, in which he played Pvt. Nate Mountain. He went on to star in various film and television projects, including The Northern Kingdom, The Good Wife and Person of Interest.
Pfeil also delved into directing, serving as an assistant director for Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Providence. It appears that Pfeil has since taken a career pivot; in a 2022 profile for The New York Times, he was described as a nurse.
He also pursued a career in philanthropy
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In 2005, Pfeil began a humanitarian career, working at various nonprofits.
He was the director of operations at CAN-DO.org — an organization that provides aid to communities in need — before becoming the director of operations at GiveLove Haiti, Eco-Sanitation.
They met on set and married in 2016
Gilpin and Pfeil met while working on the set of the 2009 drama, The Northern Kingdom. Filmed in Andes, N.Y., the movie follows three families during a meteor shower on a winter night.
Gilpin and Pfeil played the roles of siblings Carissa and Glen in the film, which was directed by Dorothy Lyman. Around seven years after meeting on set, the couple tied the knot in 2016.
The couple share two children
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Pfeil and Gilpin have two daughters: Mary, born in November 2020, and a second daughter born in May 2024.
The GLOW actress opened up to the Los Angeles Times in 2025 about motherhood, saying that it “gives you permanent access, whether you want it or not, to a darker, more rooted self.”
Gilpin’s elder daughter enjoys watching her mom act, especially during playtime. When Gilpin was starring in the Broadway production of Oh, Mary!, the performances often ran during Mary’s bedtime, so the mother-daughter duo would use the morning hours to live out Mary’s theatrical dreams.
“I basically have delusions of grandeur for 85 minutes at night, and then 7 a.m. I have another call,” she told Vogue in 2025. “Today my daughter cast me as a woman named Millie from Pennsylvania. So I was ‘Millie from Pennsylvania’ from 7 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. this morning. I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow, but I think I’m going to get cast and I’m really excited!”
He is supportive of Gilpin’s career
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While Pfeil mostly works outside of Hollywood, he is supportive of his wife’s career. He and Mary joined Gilpin on location while she filmed the 2025 Western miniseries, American Primeval.
Gilpin — who was pregnant with their second daughter while filming — played Sara Rowell, one of the lead roles.
“It wasn’t the most easy,” Gilpin told the Los Angeles Times of making the series, which included the use of a robotic steed instead of mounting a real horse. However, having her husband and daughter nearby helped.
“That was my grand equalizer,” she added. “I would spend my days screaming bloody murder in a petticoat on a horse, then get home and hunch over in a candy cane position and do bath and bedtime. Being a mom in an Airbnb is way harder than filming on top of a ski mountain in below zero degrees.”
She admires their personality differences
In All the Women in My Brain, Gilpin opened up about her husband’s interests and the juxtaposition of their personalities.
“He knew every tree type by leaf and liked to cook obscure organs with peppers that made my eyes rain,” she wrote. “He could talk for an hour straight about the make of a table leg or a hawk’s itinerary.”
Gilpin continued, “As for me, when a printer is out of ink, I fantasize about throwing the printer away. Thinking about how the wind works makes me crave a deep nap. He has talked about the wind to me for an hour. His name is, of course, Cosmo.”
