Famous couples who marry, divorce and then remarry their former spouses are often fodder for tabloid headlines. Think of the actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who were married to each other twice — first for a decade beginning in 1964, and then again in 1975 before they divorced the next year. Elon Musk and Talulah Riley were wed from 2010 to 2012 and again from 2013 to 2016.
But not all remarriages fail. The celebrity TV justice Judith Sheindlin, better known as Judge Judy, married Jerry Sheindlin in 1977. They divorced in 1990 and then remarried in 1991.
The singer and actress Marie Osmond and the motivational speaker Steve Craig were first married in 1982 and divorced in 1985. They remarried in 2011.
Ms. Osmond told People Magazine in 2019, “The thing about a second marriage is that you realize things you thought were so important aren’t.”
Precise figures on how often divorces result in marrying ex-spouses are hard to come by, but research suggests it’s relatively rare. A small study published in 2001 in the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage estimated the number at about 10 percent.
In a survey of just over a thousand people, Nancy Kalish, a former professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, put the number at 6 percent.
