Rob Lowe Quietly Supported His Wife of 30 Years by Wearing a $1,900 Ring From Her Jewelry Line on the Cover of People Magazine
Rob Lowe may have dated his wife while starring as a bad boy in a Hollywood thriller, but these days his life with Sheryl Berkoff is closer to a warm and fuzzy romantic comedy. Over 30 years after the two tied the knot, the veteran actor has a new role: quietly promoting his wife’s fine-jewelry shop, Sheryl Lowe Jewelry. Here’s how the couple continues to disprove the stereotypes of Hollywood marriages three decades after their wedding.
Sheryl Berkoff helped Rob Lowe navigate the dark side of fame
Berkoff and Lowe originally crossed paths in 1983 when Lowe was still a teenager. But their romantic entanglement started in earnest on the set of Curtis Hanson’s thriller Bad Influence in 1989. At the time, Berkoff was a makeup artist on the production; Lowe was a rising star with two Golden Globe nominations. He was deep in the party-hard Hollywood lifestyle. Dating one woman exclusively wasn’t yet in the cards.
But dating Berkoff soon forced Lowe to realize he needed to change. Reflecting on his desire for a future with her, Rob recently told People, “Alcohol and drugs were only going to make that next to impossible.” Instead of continuing the party lifestyle, Lowe sobered up. The two married in 1991.
While the couple wasted little time starting a family, they both remained busy on Hollywood sets in the early going. Berkoff worked with Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, and Alec Baldwin on Glengarry Glen Ross in 1991. He appeared in 1992’s The Vanishing with Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock. Shortly after the birth of their first child Matthew in 1993, Berkoff pulled back from Hollywood work to focus on their family.
Lowe went from Hollywood heartthrob to the good husband
Nearly four decades after launching his acting career, Lowe is still thankful Berkoff helped him leave behind a destructive lifestyle. In a January 2022 cover story for People, the 57-year-old can be seen showing off a turquoise ring, designed by Berkoff for her fine-jewelry business, Sheryl Berkoff Jewelry.
The $1,900 sterling silver ring was also promoted by Lowe on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which Lowe hosted in August 2020. As a tie-in to Lowe’s current TV role, 9-1-1 Lone Star, Berkoff included a single star on the side of the ring, aptly called the “Mr. Lowe Sonoran Turquoise ring.”
It’s far from the first time Lowe has made a big gesture to support Berkoff and their family. In 1999, he was cast in a breakthrough role in The West Wing in 1999. Lowe commuted more than 80 miles each way from Santa Barbara to LA to make sure he could say goodnight to sons Matthew and John Owen. In June 2021, Lowe even pulled some strings to get Berkoff on Family Feud for her birthday.
Completing the long journey from Hollywood bad boy, Lowe told Entertainment Tonight that Berkoff “may have saved my life” and affectionately calls her “love bug” on Instagram.
Lowe and Berkoff defy the odds for Hollywood couples
People don’t consider Hollywood to cultivate long marriages. But Berkoff and Lowe are in an exclusive club of Hollywood couples breaking the stereotype. As Insider reports, Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher have been together for 20 years. Paul Thomas Anderson and Maya Rudolph have been partners for a couple of decades. Since 2000, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas have been married. Few have made it as long as Lowe and Berkoff. However, popular actors Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon have been married since the late ’80s.
To retain the healthy marriage now in its fourth decade, the Lowe family continues to attend therapy, which Lowe likened to receiving work from a chiropractor. After therapy helped pull Lowe out of drug and alcohol binges early in his life, he sees therapy as a natural aid that ensures good communication in an era of fragmented attention spans.
But Lowe still retains a Hollywood notion of what makes a successful marriage, too. As he said on the Goopfellas podcast in 2019, a good marriage is put together the same way Alfred Hitchcock assembled a hit: “‘It’s all about the casting,'” Lowe said, quoting the iconic director, “and that’s the same with marriage. It really is all about who you pick.”
