How Did Cobie Smulders and Husband Taran Killam Meet?
Many people would recognize Cobie Smulders from her role as Nick Fury’s right-hand woman Maria Hill in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Taran Killam is best known for his work on TV sketch comedies, including The Amanda Show, Mad TV, and Saturday Night Live.
What many people don’t know is that they’re married to each other, and by extension, they also don’t know how the pair got together. Killam recently told Us magazine that’s a story in and of itself.
Read on to find out how the couple sparked, and what Smulders and Killam are up to individually.
How Smulders and Killam clicked
To hear Killam tell it, he and Smulders hit it off pretty quickly. Of all things, it was a strange turn on a road trip that sealed the deal.
“It was hot and heavy a month in,” Killam told Us Weekly at the John Dewar & Sons Traveling Whiskey Emporium in West Hollywood, “She was driving me around and suddenly she did a U-turn for no reason and I was like, ‘What is happening? What are you doing?’ And she was like, ‘Sorry. It’s something I always do.'”
As it turned out, Smulders had seen a little girl at a lemonade stand As Killam put it, “I was done.”
Smulders met Killam in 2005 when he shot a pilot with Paul Campbell, who had known Smulders for years as the two Canadian actors shared the same agent, according to TV critic Bill Brioux.
“Now they’re married and have a beautiful daughter,” says Campbell. “She owes me huge.”
Smulders and Killam now have two daughters: Shaelyn, who is 10, and a 4-year-old named Joelle.
How we met Smulders
Smulders broke into show business around 2002, nabbing one of her first prominent gigs on the Showtime series The L Word. Her big break came with the role of reporter Robin Scherbatsky on CBS’ How I Met Your Mother, staying with the show for all of its nine seasons.
Smulders’ visibility only increased when she entered the MCU, playing SHIELD agent Maria Hill in The Avengers. She reprised the role in the three Avengers sequels, as well as Captain America: Winter Soldier, and the latest Marvel adventure, Spider-Man: Far From Home. She was also in a few episodes of the TV show Agents of SHIELD.
Smashing Interviews talked to Smulders about Maria Hill right after Hill got dusted in Avengers: Infinity War. So at the time, it was tricky for her to say anything about the character.
“I like my job. I like working for Marvel, and I’d like to continue working for Marvel. So I have learned over the last decade to shut my mouth when I need to shut my mouth,” she said.
Killam plays life for laughs
Killam knows his way around the comedy world, but show business can be very unfunny, as Killam found out when his longest-running employer, SNL, let him go after six seasons, apparently because of conflicts with his offseason projects. The actor told Uproxx:
“I was there for six years. I have not been anywhere in my life for six years. I don’t know that the end of something that you’ve committed that much time and energy to is ever going to feel ‘great.’ And I think that just bodes well in both directions. Not feeling great leaving means that you were where you were supposed to be. And not feeling great leaving also means you didn’t overstay your welcome.”
Killam’s current gig is the NBC sitcom Single Parents, also starring Leighton Meester. Although he and Smulders are still married, single parenting is kind of how they raise their kids: One takes care of them while the other is working.
“I have good kids. I’ll give them the credit. What’s helping me with this show specifically is: Cobie works a lot and I work a lot so we definitely trade-off for long stretches of having the kids by ourselves,” Killam said in People.
