For a decade, Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes have kept their relationship offline – until now.

Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes are one of Hollywood's best-loved It couples. But they're one that the world doesn't know much about.

While many A-listers don't mind opening up their private lives to the public, Gosling and Mendes have made it clear they have no intention to let anyone into their world. 

Despite being together for almost 13 years – in which time they've had two daughters – the actors have gone out of their way to keep their careers very separate from one another, and their relationship out of the headlines. 

But following Gosling's recent Oscar nomination for his role in Barbie, Mendes has not only congratulated her husband online but also gone out of her way to address the criticism that surrounded his casting back in 2022. 

Watch the trailer for Barbie here. Post continues after video.

Earlier this month, she screenshotted a Rolling Stone article with the headline, "Sorry to Be the One to Say It, but Ryan Gosling Is Giving Major Cringe as Ken in 'Barbie'". In the caption of the post, she wrote, "So proud of my man. So much hate when he took on this role. So many people trying to shame him for doing it. Despite all the #Notmyken ridicule and articles written about him, he created this completely original, hilarious, heartbreaking, now iconic character and took it all the way to the Oscars."

She signed off with, "So beyond proud to be this Ken's Barbie."

It's unusual for either of the actors to address each other in public, but since the release of Barbie in 2023, both Mendes and Gosling have shown more affection towards each other – Gosling in interviews and through choice of dressing (he wore a necklace with Mendes' 'E' initial), and Mendes via social media posts.

Even so, away from the halls of the internet that so many of their peers populate, the couple is seldom seen together at all. The world’s leading photography website, Getty, has only managed to capture Mendes and Gosling in the same place at the same time on a handful of occasions, one of which was the premiere for the movie The Place Beyond The Pines – the very movie set where the two first met.

Getty has only managed to capture Mendes and Gosling in the same place at the same time on a handful of occasions (2018). Image: Getty. On the rare occasion the duo does invite the media into their orbit, it's almost always strictly professional.

They discuss the prospects of future movies, not marriage. When Marie Claire probed Mendes about her then-rumoured relationship with Gosling in March 2012, she interrupted, "Stop, just stop. I’m not gonna budge. I feel uncomfortable talking about it. It's too personal."

Mendes, now 49, is such an expert at ducking and dodging under the paparazzi's prying eye that she concealed her first pregnancy (with Esmeralda in 2014) for almost seven months before sources leaked the news to tabloids.

The arrival of their second child, Amada, now seven, was even more private. By the time celebrity news publications caught on that Mendes was even pregnant, the couple's second child was already one month old.

So, yes, they're bloody good at this privacy thing.

Watch: Ryan Gosling's Golden Globes acceptance speech. Post continues after video.

Despite soaking up the Hollywood stage lights, Mendes in particular opts out of the glitzy parties, the penthouse mixers and the endless opportunities for social climbing.

"What people don't know about me is that I love being home," Mendes told Shape in 2017. "Instead of being on the red carpet, I'd rather be home with my girls."

While the mother-of-two is notoriously more private than her partner, she did open up in 2019 about finding love with Gosling.

"It was the furthest thing from my mind," she told Women's Health.

"[Then] Ryan Gosling happened," she said. "I mean, falling in love with him. Then it made sense for me to have… not kids, but his kids. It was very specific to him."

As for Gosling, he's not taken any of his relationships – or stardom – for granted.

"I got to meet the girl of my dreams, Eva Mendes," he said in mid-January 2024 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. "I have two dream children. I dreamed of one day making movies and now movies have made my life a dream.

"So the way I see it, there's no way I've contributed half as much to cinema as cinema has contributed to me. But the idea that I might've given something back to the thing that has given so much to me is too great an honour for me to express."

Despite being ultra-protective over her kids, Mendes opened up to a follower on Instagram in 2020, where she said she won't be posting any pictures of her children until they can give her informed "consent".

"I have always had a clear boundary when it comes to my man and my kids," she shared. "I'll talk about them, of course, with limits, but I won't post pictures of our daily life. And since my children are still so little and don't understand what posting their image really means, I don't have their consent. And I won't post their image until they're old enough to give me consent."

"As far as Ryan and I – it just works for us this way, to stay private."

EXCLUSIVE: "He's my co-pilot." Eva Mendes on getting through the pandemic with Ryan Gosling.

In 2020, she told Mamamia Gosling was her "co-pilot". 

"My heart really goes out to single parents doing it on their own [during the pandemic] because I have an amazing, amazing partner," the actor explained.

"Ryan is a beyond incredible father and he's my co-pilot. We talked about how both of our mums were pretty much single mums, they were doing it on their own, so we just send a lot of love to single parents because they have the extra challenge of doing it alone."

And while Gosling speaks of his love for his partner, he does it in a subtle way.

“You don’t get to be up here without standing on the shoulders of a mountain of people,” Gosling began his acceptance speech at the 2017 Golden Globe awards.

“There’s no time to thank everyone. I would like to try to thank one person properly and say while I was singing and dancing and playing piano and having one of the best experiences I’ve ever had on a film, my lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second, and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer. If she hadn’t had taken all that on so that I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me today. So sweetheart, thank you.”

In an interview with GQ, Gosling shared he's been thinking about time more than he's ever had to before, now that his "kids are growing up so fast I need to keep an eye on the clock in a way I never used to".

"Our kids were at a difficult age not to be able to see other kids and interact with people, even though Eva and I did our best," he explained, adding he and Mendes seemed to do "more acting in quarantine than in our films. Tougher crowd, though".

"I know that I'm with the person I'm supposed to be with," Gosling told Hello magazine in 2015.

And for this couple, it seems that's all there is to it.

This article was published on February 3, 2018 and has since been updated with new information.

Feature Image: Getty /Mamamia.