Minutes after meeting her future wife, Lily Tomlin was in love. They've been together 50 years.

Actor/comedian Lily Tomlin has spent more than half of her life with Jane Wagner. It was in 1971 when Lily and Jane first crossed paths. 

"I tell you, in two minutes, I fell in love with her," Lily told Variety. 

"A friend brought her to my hotel room. She had on hot pants, stretchy boots that went up to her knee, and a little backpack. I don't know what it was, but I was in love. It was an ecstatic time when we found each other. Frankly, I was pretty taken with her as soon as I saw her. We just sort of clicked. We became a couple right away."

The next day, they went on their first date - and the rest is history. 

Over the next few decades, the pair worked together closely - Jane often being the writer who came up with some of Lily's most famous characters and comedic skits.

Throughout the early years of their relationship however, Lily and Jane did not publicly disclose their union, nor their sexuality. 

Lily and Jane in 1986. Image: Getty.

In 1975, TIME Magazine approached Lily with the opportunity to 'come out' on its cover, and even though it was "a hard decision to make," Lily ultimately decided to turn it down because she wanted to be acknowledged for her acting, not her sexual identity.

"I fell down on the side of probably good sense, so I decided I wasn't going to play their game. I wanted to be acknowledged for my performance. I can see in retrospect that was hardly worth it," Lily joked on The Ellen Show.

Ultimately, Lily and Jane's relationship was "an open secret".

Lily didn't officially share her sexuality on a public level until after her mum passed away in 2005.

"My mother would have died. Literally. If she'd lived to see me come out," Lily told The Telegraph in 2015. "Bless her heart, she was Southern, basically fundamentalist, but she was very witty and sweet and kind, and she adored Jane. She died 10 years ago. She was 91. So that was always kind of a dilemma for me. My brother is gay also, and my mother just about collapsed when she found out, so a second blow for her elder more responsible daughter would have been a lot for her."

She later told The Guardian: "My mother was pretty traditional. Most of my relatives? Same thing. That generation would be horrified, 20, 30 years ago, if I'd announced it to them. So I never did."

By 2012, the pair received a joint star on the Palm Springs' Hollywood Walk of Fame for their partnership in the entertainment industry.

And a year later, they made things official and got married on New Year's Eve in 2013.

A few days before the wedding ceremony, they tried to go incognito to get their marriage license.

"We went in Van Nuys [a different neighbourhood in Los Angeles] because if anyone should see us, we didn't want them to write about us," the couple said to PEOPLE. "There were all kinds of young kids there getting married."

Lily and Jane today. Image: YouTube.

A few days later, Lily and Jane wed in an intimate ceremony at a friend's house.

"It was sweet," Lily said. "We didn't have any rings, so I went into our jewellery and was digging out rings. I said, 'We have to have some kind of rings!'"

Someone who has been a strong friend and ally to the couple over the years has been Lily's Grace and Frankie co-star Jane Fonda.

Back in 2015, Lily said she and Fonda discovered they were being paid the same amount as the male supporting actors in Grace and Frankie, while they were the leads.

The two worked together to correct that fact. 

"Yeah, a lot of women – great movie stars – don't get paid what men do. I don't know what the disparity is, but it's probably as much as they can get away with. I've never been in that rarefied air of $20m a picture or whatever they get," Lily said.

But working together with Fonda has always been a joy, Lily noted, with the pair being close friends for decades.

As Fonda said on Jimmel Kimmel Live: "I am fascinated with her. I cannot believe the funny bone she has and I've loved her from the moment I saw her."

Watch: Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda on their friendship. Post continues below.

Fonda, Jane Wagner and Lily have all continued to work together and remain close friends.

As for Lily and her wife Jane's work relationship, they've always said that their romantic bond was strengthened by their shared love for comedy and scriptwriting. 

"We share similar feelings about people and about the world," Lily said. "She's able to verbalise it and I'm able to physicalise it. She writes satirically but tenderly, and she loves farce and black comedy and broad slapstick. When you put all this together and make an audience laugh and be moved, it's just glorious."

The couple at one point did consider having children, with Jane always more open to the idea than Lily. But in the end, they decided to focus on themselves and their careers.

"I mean, sometimes I think it would be nice to have somebody who looks like a replica of you in some fashion, but I don't think it ever was an aspiration of mine," Lily said to The Guardian recently.

"She [Jane] has a very handsome nephew and we thought, 'Well, we could get his sperm and I could bear his child.' I wouldn't want to, but I could. In retrospect, we say every day, 'I'm so glad we didn't have any children.' When I think of the world now, I don't want to even deal with having to raise a child."

So what's the secret to a 50-year-plus union? 

"Mutual admiration and respect," Lily said to PEOPLE.

As Jane said: "I've been very lucky and fortunate to find somebody and have this happen to me. It was such a gift."

Feature Image: Getty.