A witty story by a Hollywood actor about his conversation with his wife is spreading online. We checked to see if De Niro reported anything similar.

The full statement goes like this: “After 50 years of marriage, I once looked carefully at my wife and said: “50 years ago we had a small house, an old car, we slept on the couch and watched a small black and white TV, but every night I went to bed with a beautiful 19-year-old girl. Now I have a huge expensive house, many expensive cars, a huge bed in a luxurious bedroom, a wide-screen TV, but I sleep in the same bed with a 69-year-old woman. I'm starting to doubt my marriage." My wife is a very reasonable woman. She was not offended and did not swear. She simply suggested that I find myself a 19-year-old girl, and she would make sure that I again lived in a small house, slept on a sagging sofa and watched black and white TV. Well, aren't women gorgeous? They really know how to solve all their husbands’ problems.”

A self-ironic saying attributed to actor Robert De Niro was published by some Russian-speaking Media And online collections of aphorisms, but it spread especially actively in social networks: Facebook (there are publications with 9500, 1100 And 226 reposts), Instagram, "VKontakte" And Telegram.

At the time of writing, the winner of two Oscars Robert De Niro turned 81 years old. From 1976–1988 he was married on his colleague Diane Abbott, dated model Tuki Smith from 1988-1996, was married to actress Grace Highsmith from 1997-2018, and in 2023 he had a child (his seventh) with martial arts instructor Tiffany Chen. Moreover, all of De Niro’s official and common-law wives, except the first, were significantly younger than him (Chen was 36 years old). Therefore, the quote attributed to the actor is incorrect, at least from a factual point of view: he simply did not have a wife with whom he lived together for half a century. In any case, it was not possible to find such a quote in interviews with De Niro, other authoritative sources and even films with his participation, and the actor has verified accounts on social networks No.

As an analysis of social networks shows, in Russian a quote attributing De Niro began spread in December 2017. In English, signed by the actor, she too popular, but appeared on the Internet later - apparently, through English pages Russian-language sites with similar jokes.

However, this does not mean that this joke was not known abroad before. In a slightly paraphrased form and without attribution to De Niro, it was actively distributed in X since 2009, on Facebook - since 2010, and on some forums you can find publications 2006. Since at least the same year, the joke has been published in book publications And American newspapers. Most often it includes 25 years of marriage, but there are also variations, for example, with 17, 30, 42, 44 and 50 years. The “husband’s problems” mentioned at the end of the text are in many cases called “midlife crisis.”

Anecdote in Sandy Roselman's collection "you will laugh"(2008)

So the quote about 50 years of marriage has nothing to do with Robert De Niro. In fact, this is an anecdote from about 20 years ago, the authorship of which was attributed to the actor by social network users no later than 2017.

Cover photo: Gabriel Hutchinson Photography /Wikimedia Commons/ CC-BY SA 4.0