The “Malcolm in the Middle” actress married Rusty Long in 2025.

Jane Kaczmarek on reuniting with and marrying high school sweetheart: ‘I went right back to being a 15-year-old girl’

The "Malcolm in the Middle" actress married Rusty Long in 2025.

By Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence is a former associate editor at **. He left EW in 2022.

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April 30, 2026 2:20 p.m. ET

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Rusty Long and Jane Kaczmarek at 'Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair' premiere. Credit:

Cindy Ord/WireImage

- Jane Kaczmarek reunited with her high school sweetheart at her 50-year reunion.

- The *Malcolm in the Middle *star soon married Rusty Long.

- Kaczmarek has three kids with ex-husband Bradley Whitford.

It's hard to have a better 50-year high school reunion than the one *Malcolm in the Middle* star Jane Kaczmarek had.

When returning to her Wisconsin roots to celebrate the milestone event, the seven-time Emmy nominee reconnected with her high school sweetheart, Rusty Long, and married him shortly thereafter.

“I cannot believe I’m coming back to where I started and this boy that I loved,” Kaczmarek told *Us Weekly*. “It has been such an amazing gift to me… I couldn’t make up a better man for me at this point in my life.”

The 70-year-old actress was married to *West Wing *star Bradley Whitford from 1992 to 2010, and the couple had three children together. Kaczmarek called getting divorced "sad" and a "massacre," and it would be over a decade between her separation from Whitford and when she saw her former boyfriend.

Jane Kaczmarek on 'The Kelly Clarkson Show'.

Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal via Getty

Kaczmarek and Long separated upon graduation, with him going to law school and her headed to drama school. But they crossed paths at the reunion, and it turns out that their respective best friends had married each other, so the four of them grabbed a meal together after the festivities.

“Going to dinner with him after 50 years, when he touched the small of my back, I went right back to being a 15-year-old girl kissing this boy I liked,” she recalled. “That is a magical, heady thing to experience when you’re 70. To hear him say, ‘I’ve been in love with you for 52 years,’ was like waking up from a coma."

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It's been a nice run of reunions for Kaczmarek, who recently returned to her iconic role as Lois, the *Malcolm in the Middle* matriarch, in the Hulu revival *Life's Still Unfair*. And after five decades apart, she and Long didn't want to miss out on any more time together, so they got married in July 2025. And with no young children to worry about or care for, Kaczmarek is riding high in just enjoying her husband's company.

"There’s nothing [we] have to think about but each other," she said. “You think the three most important words are ‘I love you,’ and I realized the three most important words for me are ‘Honey, I’m home.’”

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