Lauren Graham Shares Rare Insight on Her Relationship With Peter Krause

Typically, Lauren Graham and Peter Krause fly together. However, like many other couples, this year brought changes (and challenges!) to their relationship.

While the former Parenthood co-stars tend to keep their personal lives private—neither even have an Instagram feed!—the actress did share some insight into their romance during a virtual appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. As Graham explained to host Ellen DeGeneres, she and Krause were recently separated for five months while she filmed The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers in Canada.

“Our unique situation was because The Mighty Ducks shot in Vancouver and because of quarantine, I couldn’t come and go,” she explained on the April 8 episode of the daytime show. “Normally, it’s a two-hour flight, you come home on the weekends. But I couldn’t do that, so we were separated for almost five months, which had never happened before.”

And when Graham returned to her and Krause’s Southern California home after months away, the house was “a little different,” she told DeGeneres.

Suddenly, Graham found herself on the bench. “There were more piles, I would say,” the Gilmore Girls star noted of the slight messiness, adding that Krause and his son Roman—who he shares with ex Christine King—really bonded during her time away. “Which was fantastic, but I think the re-entry was more difficult, it was more like they were the married couple.”

“They were like, ‘We don’t do it that way anymore,'” she recalled. “And Peter started a thing, I guess just to make COVID-life fun, where he’d go to the store and stock up on ridiculous amounts of whatever and leave it in the corner of the living room and he’d call it ‘COVID Corner.’ As if that somehow made these piles of stuff fun or a place to visit or a place to show the guests.”

Upon her return home, Graham said she felt as though she had to “respect” the corner. “So, if you need club soda or paper towels,” she joked to DeGeneres, “Come on over.”

As fans of the couple may recall, Graham and Krause first met in the late ’90s. However, they didn’t start dating for more than a decade.

“We had met on a show called Caroline in the City—a Lea Thompson show back in the day,” Krause said during a 2017 LIVE With Kelly appearance. “We were guest-starring. She had me move some furniture into her apartment for her back then…I didn’t catch the signal.”

In her own 2010 interview with Redbook, Graham had a slightly different take on their initial meeting. “I remember one day he asked me over to his house to play a board game—and that’s exactly what we ended up doing. So I was like: This guy doesn’t like me. But I was also like: Who actually plays a board game?” she told the outlet. “It’s so interesting to me that there was clearly a connection there back then, but I don’t think either of us was ready.”

Thankfully, once they reunited on Parenthood, they put away the games and both emerged winners.