Rob Reiner Met His Wife Michelle While Working on a Classic Romantic Comedy

In December 2025, director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, died at their home in Los Angeles. The news of their deaths has sent shockwaves through Hollywood, in part because police have indicated that they are investigating these deaths as homicides.

Even as many react to that stunning news, others are looking back at the immense entertainment legacy that Rob leaves behind him, and wondering how he and his wife first met. As it turns out, Michelle played a pivotal role in the ending to one of the great romantic comedies ever made. Here's what we know.

In an interview with People from 2019, Rob explained that meeting Michelle changed the ending of When Harry Met Sally, transforming it from something more melancholic into something more uplifting.

“Now, this is interesting that we’re watching this scene because I’d been married for 10 years, I was single for 10 years and making a mess of my personal life, in and out of relationships and not being able to make anything work," he explained of his romantic history.

“And when the first draft of the script, or the draft we were going to shoot, Harry and Sally don’t get together. They meet each other years later and walk their separate ways," he explained. “I met my wife while making the movie and we changed the ending and this is what we came up with. Billy came up with some of this dialogue and that’s how we decided to end the movie, that they do end up together.”

Michelle, a photographer, married Rob in 1989, and the two went on to have three children together. It seems like her presence in Rob's life helped him believe that love could be real, and ultimately convinced him that the ending of When Harry Met Sally should be romantic instead of something sadder. That ending is also part of the reason the movie has endured for as long as it has.

During an interview with The New York Times in 1989, Rob recalled seeing Michelle for the first time when she visited the set of When Harry Met Sally. “I look over and I see this girl, and ‘Whoo!’ I was attracted immediately,” he explained.

In addition to reshaping the ending of that romantic comedy, though, Michelle also worked as a photographer on the set of his 1990 movie Misery, and was a producer on Spinal Tap II, which was released just this year.

The two also partnered on Rob's political projects, per The New York Times, including a 1990s campaign that was focused on the importance of early childhood development. Although Michelle was not in the movie business in the way that her husband was, she nevertheless had a profound role in shaping the course of movie history.