Celebrity / TV

How ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ Star LL Cool J Met His Wife, Simone Smith

NCIS Los Angeles star LL Cool J and his wife, Simone Smith, have been married for more than two decades. Here’s what Showbiz Cheat Sheet knows about how LL Cool J met his wife. How long LL Cool J and Simone Smith have been married LL Cool J and Simone Smith have been married since …

by Sheiresa Ngo

Published on July 19, 2020

3 min read

How long LL Cool J and Simone Smith have been married

Simone Smith and LL Cool J | Dan MacMedan/WireImage

LL Cool J and Simone Smith have been married since 1995. They have four children together. Although the couple appears to be more in love than ever, they’ve had their share of rough patches. At one point, shortly after they were married, Simone stopped talking to LL Cool J for two weeks. During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, she revealed the reason for her silence was because she was upset about the racy music video he made for “Doin’ It.”

How LL Cool J and Simone Smith met

LL Cool J and Simone Smith met in 1987. A friend of LL Cool J asked him if he would like to meet his cousin. At first, LL Cool J declined. ‘I said, ‘Nah, nah, nah,’ he told Phil Donahue and Marlo Smith in their book What Makes a Marriage Last. “And then I looked over and saw Simone and I was like, ‘Alright, I’ll meet your cousin. Bring her over.’ So, I said hello to her and then we kind of vibed—we had a nice moment of eye contact. I said, ‘You should come around.’ She said, ‘You come around.’”

LL Cool J and Simone Smith’s first date

LL Cool J and Simone Smith | Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic

When LL Cool J asked Simone for her number, she didn’t think he would call her. “I said to him, ‘Well, you’re probably going to take my number and throw it in the corner with a bunch of other numbers,” said Simone in Donahue and Thomas’ book. “And he was like, ‘No Shorty, I’m going to call you.’”

Simone didn’t think LL Cool J would remember her, but he proved her wrong. LL Cool J and his friends came to Simone’s house and asked her to go out to eat. They decided to pick up Chinese food and bring it back to Simone’s home. “That was our first date, and pretty much the rest is history,” says Simone. “We hung out almost every day until Todd had to go back out on tour.”

Simone said LL Cool J tried to break up with her at the time, but she asked him why. According to her, he was concerned she would meet someone else while he was away. Simone assured him she wasn’t going to date someone else and she told him they weren’t breaking up.

How LL Cool J and Simone Smith keep their marriage strong

Simone says religion keeps her grounded and is the center of her life. “My religion played a big role in my childhood, in our marriage, and in raising our children,” she says. “Absolutely.” Simone says another key to a strong marriage is compromise.

“I would say that being married to Todd requires a lot of compromise. In any marriage there’s a lot of compromise, but in our marriage, one person compromises more than the other.” Simone tells Donahue and Thomas she has to be flexible for her husband because of the nature of his job, but she also says she is a strong woman. LL Cool J agrees, saying compromise is important.

“I think you have a better chance of keeping things intact if you just relax a little bit and be confident in the relationship,” says LL Cool J. “If you don’t get too caught up in this stuff, I think you have a better chance of things lasting.”