In it for the long term! Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have one of the longest-lasting marriages in Hollywood, but they’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in the years since they tied the knot. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air alum met the actress in 1994, but the two didn’t start dating until the following year. They married on New Year’s Eve in 1997. However, almost 20 years later, the Girls Trip star admitted that she regretted starting a relationship with Will while he was still married to his ex-wife, Sheree Zampino. “Because I didn’t understand marriage, I didn’t understand divorce,” she said during the 2018 premiere episode of Red Table Talk, which featured Zampino as a guest. “I probably should have fallen back.” Despite their rocky beginnings, the two women bonded after Jada met Trey, Zampino’s son with Will. “She was my entry point into motherhood,” the Baltimore native explained. “I was co-mother with her. At the particular time, before [having a blended family] was popular, before it was even an idea, we tried to create something we had never experienced.” In July 1998, Will and Jada welcomed their son Jaden. Their daughter, Willow, followed in 2000. While the couple became a model for celebrity marriage, they dealt with behind-the-scenes drama, often shooting down divorce rumors and even going so far as to split up for a time. “I was done with your ass. I was done with you,” Will admitted with a laugh during a July 2020 episode of Red Table Talk that revealed they had separated in 2015. “Marriage has that, though. We decided to separate for a period of time, then you figure out how to make yourself happy and I’ll try to figure out how to make myself happy. I really felt like we could be over.” The pair stopped speaking at that point, and Jada entered into a brief “entanglement” with August Alsina. The Hitch star and the Hawthorne alum eventually reconciled. Despite their rocky road, the duo previously insisted they were not considering a divorce. “Because I had been divorced before, I didn’t get divorced again. Divorce was not an option,” the Philadelphia native emphasized on Red Table Talk in October 2018. “I was devastated even worse than a divorce. We broke up the marriage and got back together. We had to rebuild with new rules and something completely different.” At the conclusion of the July 2020 discussion of their marriage, they reiterated their stance on their unbreakable relationship. “We cycle together. We die together. Bad marriage for life,” they said, referencing a quote from Will’s Bad Boys film series. Less than two years later, the pair’s relationship once again made headlines after Smith punched Chris Rock in the face at the 2022 Oscars, following the Saturday Night Live alum’s onstage joke about Pinkett Smith’s hair loss. Two months later, in June 2022, the Matrix Reloaded star addressed the incident on her Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk, noting that she wants the two actors to “heal, talk this out and reconcile.” She also threw her support behind her husband of almost 25 years. “Until then, Will and I will continue to do what we’ve done for the last 28 years, which is continue to figure out this thing called life together,” Pinkett Smith added. Scroll down to see the ups and downs of Smith’s decade-long marriage.