Most people might identify them as Penny and Leonard Hofstadter, but Kaley Cuoco and Johnny Galecki’s connection goes way deeper than their on-screen relationship in The Big Bang Theory.
Today, the two actors are very close friends, having previously been romantically involved. They have both since moved on from that, with Cuoco currently dating Ozark star Tom Pelphrey. Galecki’s last known relationship was with model Alaina Meyer, with whom he has a son named Avery.
Although Cuoco and Galecki’s break-up happened while they were both still working on Big Bang, they managed to remain not just affable with each other, but in fact, they appeared to grow closer as the years wore on.
At one point, Cuoco revealed that they would call each other at night and cry after landing lucrative rises in their pay during their tenure on the show. Both stars are said to have started out on a salary of around $60,000 in the first season of the Chuck Lorre sitcom on CBS.
By the final season, that figure had reportedly risen to about $1 million each per episode.
When Kaley Cuoco and Johnny Galecki were dating in the late 2010s, very few people knew of their relationship. In fact, it wasn’t until they had split up that the 8 Simple Rules actress first broke the news to the public.
“[Our relationship] was such a huge part of my life and no one knew about it,” Cuoco said to CBS! Watch Magazine in 2010, per Us Weekly. “It was a wonderful relationship but we never spoke a word about it and never went anywhere together. We knew how to keep it deep inside and never bring it on that set, ever.”
Although neither of the two ex-lovers has ever said exactly why they decided to end things, Cuoco did intimate that it was difficult for them to continue working together, while also maintaining a secret romantic fling. She said that all the hiding “took a little bit of a toll” on Galecki and her.
Galecki himself told the same magazine that even though he didn’t like to talk about the subject, Cuoco remained “not just an ex, [but] a part of my life.”
Johnny Galecki has been acting since 1987, when he appeared as a character called Matt Rowles in the movie Time Out for Dad. At the time, he was only eight years old. The actor was born in the Bree city of Limburg, Belgium, where his father was stationed as a rehabilitation teacher by the U.S. Air Force.
Together with his family, Galecki relocated to the States when he was still quite young, and he grew up in Oak Park, Illinois.
Some of his future castmates on The Big Bang Theory are actually very extensively educated beyond high school: Mayim Bialik is a real-life neuroscientist, with a PhD in the field, while Jim Parsons has a Masters Degree in Acting from the University of San Diego.
Galecki himself never achieved such levels of education, as he actually dropped out of high school after one day. He did go on to acquire a high school diploma through private tutoring, but never went to college afterwards. Still, his 35-year-long career has helped him to amass a net worth of $100 million.
There are multiple parallels between Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco’s lives and careers. Apart from starring in The Big Bang Theory, they both lack a college degree, and also started out as child actors.
Cuoco’s very first professional screen role was a character called Connie Reinhardt in the film Quicksand: No Escape, which also starred Donald Sutherland and Felicity Huffman. She graduated high school at the age of 16, at which point she had already been recognized by Forbes as one of the highest paid actresses on TV.
Their parallel paths have unsurprisingly led to them accumulating a very similar amount of wealth to date. In fact, Celebrity Net Worth estimates that Cuoco is also worth $100 million, exactly as much as Galecki.
The California-born star is currently starring as a flight attendant in the similarly-titled series on HBO Max, for which she also serves as executive producer. The Flight Attendant has so far aired for two seasons, but Cuoco recently hinted that the network was considering renewing it for a third.
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