These Child Stars Just Made Me Believe in Love Again

“I believed in her. I mean, I believed in people before, but I believed in her down to my bone marrow," Macaulay Culkin told Cosmopolitan of Brenda Song. "You know what I mean?" I wish!

By Audra Heinrichs  |  January 27, 2025 | 3:39pm
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These Child Stars Just Made Me Believe in Love Again

On Monday, Cosmopolitan unveiled a February cover story the likes of which my childhood self could never have dreamed: London Tipton aka Brenda Song and Macaulay Culkin aka Kevin McCallister. In various states of domestic bliss. Together. Just in time for Valentine’s Day. And not to be dramatic, but it might’ve just made me believe in love again.

If you didn’t know, the child-turned-adult actors have been together for years and now share two children. Their journey, as they tell it for the first time in the interview, began in 2014. Seth Green (Song’s then-co-star in the short-lived FOX sitcom, Dads) introduced them but she wasn’t impressed. “He was trying to be funny about our show being canceled and I was not having it,” Song told the magazine. Fortunately, they were brought together again in 2017 while filming Changeland. Song had sworn off dating and frozen her eggs while Culkin was “smoking two packs a day.” He likens his past self to Jack Sparrow. Enough said.

Still, they began hanging out on set, playing rummy, and talking late into the night. On one such occasion, Song indicated she’d like to name a future child “Dakota” completely unaware that Culkin’s sister who’d passed away in 2008 had the same name. Culkin also shared some of his private journals with her.

“I saw this person he put out there—it was a product of this armor that he’s put on to protect himself,” Song said. “But I could see that that wasn’t really who he was; I could see these glimpses of this really interesting, very sensitive, very intelligent, artistic person that he doesn’t really let show.”

They didn’t make it official for a long time despite doing all the things that two people in a relationship tend to do (cooking dinner for the other, sharing Christmas celebrations, etc.).

“I’d never felt this way before,” Culkin said. “I believed in her. I mean, I believed in people before, but I believed in her down to my bone marrow. You know what I mean? I put it behind the armor though, behind that shield.” A good question to ask yourself would be: Would your situationship describe you this way? If the answer is “probably not,” well, same.

Finally, they committed and had their first son, Dakota (*cries*), then, a second, Carson, and have lived happily ever after. They finish each other’s sentences, go to Costco together, encourage each other’s careers, and unlike most of Hollywood, don’t have a nanny. Hell, they haven’t even gotten married yet because they’re content as is. Perhaps that’s the secret?

“When I met Mack, there was so much more of me that I hadn’t figured out,” Song reflected. “He made me such a bigger person and I was like, Oh my god. I didn’t realize that there were so many things I didn’t know about myself.”

“I got your back no matter what,” Culkin said. “I’ll do whatever you say you want to do.” Damn, I need me a Culkin kind of man (read: a simp). You’ve got Macaulay saying all this and Kieran kissing his wife up and down red carpets…

“I wasn’t putting the onus on her,” Culkin continued. “But at the same time, I was like, ‘No, I want the things that you want. I’m in this to the end, to the very end.’”

Ever notice how love wins exclusively when men are…oh, I don’t know. Good???

 
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