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Last week, we talked about Fred Armisen’s appearance on David Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast. Fred talked about how, although his seven year relationship with Natasha Lyonne didn’t end up working out, he felt that it was still a successful one because they parted ways as friends. I had mentioned that between Nastasha and his short-lived marriage to Elisabeth Moss Fred’s love life kinda intrigued me. I’m here for gossip about it. Someone in the comments had asked what the deal was with Fred and actress Riki Lindhome. Well, ask and ye shall receive, because Riki just did an exclusive interview with People where she revealed that she and Fred have been married for just over two years. Riki also explained that their son, Keaton, was born via surrogacy just after they started dating and exactly three months before they got married.
Two years ago on June 1, Wednesday actress Riki Lindhome and Saturday Night alum Fred Armisen secretly tied the knot. The couple had known each other for 15 years, but it wasn’t until they started filming Wednesday together in 2020 in Romania that something changed. Each time Lindhome thought about it, her heart overruled her brain. “I could tell I was having feelings, but then I was like, ‘Well, I can’t say anything because I’m about to have a baby,” Lindhome, 45, says exclusively to PEOPLE at her studio in Los Angeles.
After several years of failed IVF treatments and her plans to adopt fell through, Lindhome decided to have a child via surrogacy and a donated sperm and egg. She welcomed her son Keaton on March 1, 2022, while dating Armisen, 57, who was still filming abroad. Ultimately, she didn’t know if this was something he wanted for their future together.
“He didn’t get to meet Keaton until three weeks after he was born because he was still working. And I said, ‘All I want is the truth. If you feel in your gut that’s not for you, it doesn’t make you a jerk. I’m not mad at you,” she told him. “I said, ‘I still think you’re the best. I just want you to really feel what you feel. And then be honest about it because it’s a big life-altering thing.’ And he said, ‘Okay, okay.’”
Lindhome didn’t want to pressure her boyfriend. After all, they had only been dating a few weeks. “I told him, ‘So you just tell me what your heart says, and he said ‘Yes.’ It was just insta-family, basically,” she says, laughing.
While the two worked together on set for two months, Lindhome wanted to tell Armisen how she felt. “I knew that I was starting to have feelings for him, and I wanted to go on a date. That’s what I knew. So I was like, ‘Okay, let’s explore,’ she remembers. “Then it unfolded naturally over time. I wasn’t like, ‘You’re the dad.’ I was like, ‘I want to have dinner with you.’ My thought was, ‘I want to kiss you. I want to see you.’ Then it just kept going.”
Two weeks before Keaton was born on March 1, 2022, she told Armisen that she loved him. “It was weird, crazy timing,” she says. With them, their level of vulnerability increased gradually. Lindhome barely noticed they had entered into intimate territory until they were already there.
“We were friends for so long that it just happened fast. We had one dinner and then it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s see where this goes.’ It was surprising. I would say it was more of a shock to him. He did not see it coming at all.”
After the birth, she moved into Armisen’s home with Keaton to start their family life. Three months later, the couple got married. “I was ready to date him, I didn’t know what it would turn into,” she says.
“I thought maybe I would be a single mom with a boyfriend. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t even know if he was interested at first — I didn’t know anything. But it was a natural evolution,” she continues. “Then we got married in a courthouse. It’s not a secret, but we didn’t really tell people. We didn’t announce it or anything. And we thought people would hear about it eventually. And that’s what happened, one friend at a time.”
On their wedding day, Lindhome wore a white sundress she bought from the Glendale Galleria mall at Macy’s and Armisen wore a suit. Their 3-month-old son Keaton joined them for the ceremony along with one friend as a witness. “I didn’t even tell my mom,” admits Lindhome. “I never wanted to get married. I am not a wedding person. It’s not for me. But this was just for us. We also didn’t want to hurt people’s feelings by not having a wedding — and we didn’t want to get pressured into having one. We just wanted to be like, ‘Guess what we did a few months ago?’”
Lindhome says the couple kept it simple. There was no engagement and they picked out the rings themselves. But their jewelry didn’t arrive on time, so they had to wear temporary ones for the ceremony. The two picked a random Wednesday afternoon to get married, so they could honor the time they fell in love on set.
“The wedding was three minutes long and then we got some ice cream,” she says.
Congrats to the Armisen-Lindhome family. Hey, it may not have been the most conventional way of doing things, but sometimes, life is not that cut and dry. I’ve known people who married soon after they started dating and they’re still together, decades later. Given that Fred has said that his marriage with Elisabeth ended so poorly because he cheated on her, we all wondered last week whether or not he had actually “changed.” Sometimes, having a child can really force someone to grow up and put others first. I’m willing to give Fred the benefit of the doubt. Clearly, Riki is very happy with their unconventional little insta-family. Sometimes, we get lucky and the Universe brings us just what we needed at the exact right time.
