Macauley Culkin and Brenda Song are planning to get married after eight years together and two children—but they're not in a big rush. The former child stars, who have kept their private lives so private over the years that many were shocked when their first child was born, opened up to Cosmopolitan about their relationship. "That the public is like, 'Wait, they're together and they have kids?' Good. That means we did our job,' says Home Alone star Culkin, 44. Song, 36, adds, "There was a point in time where I was like, 'I must be in a simulation! I have two children with Macaulay Culkin!"
Culkin and Song, best known for playing rich girl London Tipton in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, did not hit if off when they first met at Seth Green's house in 2014, they tell Cosmopolitan. Green and Song's sitcom Dads had just been canceled and Culkin's attempt to lighten the mood with jokes did not go down well. But romance blossomed—slowly at first, since they had both been hurt in earlier relationships—three years later, when they were in Thailand filming Changeland, which Green starred in and directed. Song says Culkin gave her his journals, and she "could see these glimpses of this really interesting, very sensitive, very intelligent, artistic person that he doesn't really let show."
Culkin's proposal years ago involved 21 individually wrapped garden gnomes—"it's a long story," Cosmopolitan says—but they haven't set a wedding date yet. "We talked about eloping," Song says. "But I was like, 'If we eloped, my mom would have a heart attack that she wasn't going to be there." For now, they are "not married but maybe better than married," per Cosmopolitan, and they are starting family traditions with their sons, 3-year-old Dakota and 2-year-old Carson. They have watched Home Alone together the last two Christmases. "Dakota thinks that he's Kevin McCallister," Song says. (More Macaulay Culkin stories.)