Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan met on the set of Family Ties in 1985, and their connection was immediate.
They married in 1988, just three years before everything changed.
In 1991, at only 29 years old, Fox received devastating news: he had Parkinson’s disease, a progressive condition with no cure.
Fox has since admitted one of his first fears wasn’t about his career or his future — it was about his marriage. He worried that Tracy, still so early in their life together, would walk away from a husband facing a lifetime of uncertainty.
She didn’t.
Tracy stayed by his side through the diagnosis, through years of keeping it private, and through his eventual decision to go public in 1998.
That same year, Fox turned his private battle into a public mission, founding the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
With Tracy supporting him every step of the way, the foundation has since become the largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s research in the world, raising over two billion dollars toward finding a cure.
Together, they also raised four children and built a life that many thought Parkinson’s would make impossible.
Now, 35 years after that terrifying diagnosis, Michael and Tracy are still together, still showing up for each other in public and in private, still fighting for a cure side by side.
Their marriage has become its own quiet symbol of what commitment can look like when tested by something neither of them chose.
See how Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan have stayed together through it all, three and a half decades later.
