Tom Hanks Celebrates ‘Beloved’ Wife Rita Wilson’s 69th Birthday with a Bathing Suit Snap. “This Beautiful Woman Celebrates Her Birthday TODAY,” He Captioned the Sweet Snap

By Alison Boshoff, Chief Showbusiness Commentator

Los Angeles, October 26, 2025 – Tom Hanks, 69, the man who has played every American hero from Captain Phillips to Mr. Rogers, paused the world’s scroll on Sunday with a single Instagram post that melted hearts faster than a summer sidewalk. There, against a backdrop of turquoise Aegean waves and sun-bleached limestone, stood Rita Wilson—his wife of thirty-seven years—radiant in a cobalt-blue one-piece, hair tousled by the wind, arms flung wide as if embracing the entire Mediterranean. “This beautiful woman celebrates her birthday TODAY,” Hanks wrote beneath the photo, adding a simple red-heart emoji. “Happy Birthday, Reets. You make the world brighter.”

The snap, taken on the couple’s annual Greek island retreat, rocketed past two million likes in under four hours. But this wasn’t just another celebrity birthday tribute. It was a love letter in pixels—proof that Hollywood’s most enduring marriage is still, somehow, getting better with age. At 69, Rita Wilson isn’t merely surviving the spotlight; she’s thriving in it, and Hanks, ever the storyteller, wants the world to know exactly why.

The photo itself is pure poetry. Rita stands ankle-deep in the shallows of a secluded cove on Antiparos, the tiny Cycladic island the couple has quietly adopted as their second home. The swimsuit—a high-cut, square-necked number from Eres—clings to her toned frame, the result of daily Pilates and sunrise hikes with their golden retriever, Milo. Sunlight catches the salt on her skin; laughter crinkles the corners of her eyes. Behind her, a traditional whitewashed chapel perches on the cliff, its bell tower glinting like a promise. Hanks, off-camera, clearly couldn’t resist the shot. “He kept saying, ‘Stay right there—don’t move!’” Rita later revealed on her own Stories, posting a behind-the-scenes clip of Tom crouching like a paparazzo, phone raised, grinning like a teenager.

But the image is more than aesthetics. It’s a declaration. After thirty-seven years, four children, two grandchildren, and a pandemic that nearly stole them both, the Hanks-Wilson union remains the gold standard in a town that devours romance for breakfast. And on Rita’s 69th, Tom chose to celebrate not just her beauty, but her resilience, her talent, her unbreakable spirit. “She’s the melody to my chaos,” he told me exclusively over coffee at their Pacific Palisades estate last week. “Every year with her feels like the first.”

Their love story began, as all great ones do, with a spark and a stumble. It was 1981 on the set of ABC’s Bosom Buddies, a cross-dressing sitcom that no one expected to launch legends. Tom, then 25, was the goofy everyman with the megawatt smile. Rita, 24, guest-starred as a love interest. “I remember the exact moment,” Tom recalls. “She walked in wearing a yellow sundress and said her line—something about a parking ticket—and I forgot mine. Completely blank. The director yelled cut, and I just stared at her like an idiot.” Rita, ever gracious, laughs at the memory. “He recovered by improvising a joke about his character’s wig catching fire. I was hooked.”

Timing, however, was cruel. Tom was married to his college sweetheart, Samantha Lewes, with whom he shared son Colin and daughter Elizabeth. Rita was single but cautious. “We were friends first,” she says. “Late-night talks in the makeup trailer about music, faith, our crazy Greek and Bulgarian families. He’d play me Springsteen on his cassette Walkman. I’d sneak him my mom’s pastitsio recipe.” By 1985, Tom’s marriage had ended amicably. He and Rita began dating quietly—no red carpets, no tabloid frenzy. “We wanted to build something real,” Tom says. “Not a headline.”

They married on April 30, 1988, in a sunset ceremony at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles. Rita wore a lace gown designed by her mother, Dorothy; Tom, a classic tux with a white rose boutonniere. Their vows were in English and Greek. “I promised to love her through every plot twist,” Tom says. “She promised to keep me humble when the reviews got too good.” Guests included Bruce Springsteen, who sang “If I Should Fall Behind” as their first-dance song, and a then-unknown Julia Roberts, who teared up in the pews.

The early years were a whirlwind. Tom’s career detonated—Big, Splash, A League of Their Own—while Rita balanced acting (Sleepless in Seattle, Runaway Bride) with motherhood. Colin arrived in 1977 (from Tom’s first marriage), Chester in 1990, Truman in 1995. “We were a traveling circus,” Rita says. “Tom on location in Fiji, me shooting in Vancouver, kids in three different schools. But every Sunday, no matter where we were, we had family dinner via Skype before Skype existed. We’d prop the laptop on the table and pass the potatoes around the screen.”

Then came the dark chapters no script could predict. In 2015, Rita was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a double mastectomy and reconstruction. Tom postponed Forrest Gump 2 to be by her side. “He slept on a cot in my hospital room,” she says. “Read me Harry Potter aloud when the pain meds made me loopy. Sang ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ off-key until the nurses begged him to stop.” Rita emerged cancer-free, but the ordeal reshaped them. “We stopped sweating the small stuff,” Tom says. “Traffic? Who cares. A bad review? Pass the gelato.”

Five years later, in March 2020, they became the first major celebrities to contract COVID-19 while filming Elvis in Australia. Isolated in a Gold Coast hospital, they leaned on humor. Tom taught the nurses to play hanky-panky; Rita live-streamed bedside concerts. “We joked that we were the original quarantine couple,” Rita says. “But honestly? It was terrifying. Tom’s fever hit 103. I thought, ‘If we don’t make it, at least we’re together.’”

They did make it—and came home stronger. Rita launched a music career in earnest, releasing her fifth album, Rita Wilson Now & Forever: Duets, last year. Tom produced, naturally. Their collaboration on “Where’s My Country Song?”—a cheeky ode to overlooked women in Nashville—earned a Grammy nod. “She’s the real triple threat,” Tom brags. “Actress, singer, producer—and she makes a mean baklava.”

Which brings us back to that birthday snap. The choice of a bathing suit wasn’t random. Rita has spent the past decade championing body positivity, especially for women over 50. After her mastectomy, she posed for AARP in lingerie, scars proudly on display. “I’m not 25 anymore,” she captioned the shoot. “But I’m alive. And that’s sexy.” The Antiparos photo is an extension of that ethos—unfiltered, unapologetic, joyful. “Tom didn’t ask me to suck in or tilt my chin,” she says. “He just said, ‘Be you.’”

Fans noticed. Comments flooded in: “Queen at 69!” “Couple goals forever.” “That swimsuit is EVERYTHING.” Even Oprah chimed in: “Rita, you are the blueprint.” But the most poignant reactions came from their children. Colin, now 47 and a director, posted a throwback of baby him in Rita’s arms: “Happy birthday to the woman who taught me love is an action verb.” Chester, 35, shared a video of Rita teaching him to dance the kalamatianos at his wedding. Truman, 29, simply wrote, “Mom, you’re cooler than Dad. Don’t tell him I said that.”

The celebration itself was a masterclass in low-key luxury. The couple rented a 19th-century captain’s house on Antiparos, all stone arches and bougainvillea. A private chef prepared a seven-course feast: grilled octopus, tomato keftedes, lamb youvetsi. Springsteen Zoomed in to sing “Happy Birthday.” Their grandchildren, ages 4 and 2, smeared frosting on Rita’s cheeks. At midnight, Tom led the group in a flashlight-lit conga line down to the beach, where he’d arranged for a local fisherman to release paper lanterns into the sky. “Sixty-nine of them,” he says. “One for every year she’s made the world better.”

But the real gift? Time. With Tom’s schedule light post-Maniac Maggie (the Pixar film he voices next summer), they’ve committed to three months a year in Greece. “No Wi-Fi in the mornings,” Rita says. “Just coffee, the sea, and each other.” They’ve even bought a small olive grove. “We’re learning to press our own oil,” Tom laughs. “If the acting thing slows down, we’ve got a backup plan: Hanks & Wilson Extra Virgin.”

Of course, no love this public escapes scrutiny. Tabloids still dredge up ancient rumors—Tom’s “flirty” interviews in the ’90s, Rita’s brief separation in 2018 over “creative differences.” Both laugh it off. “We’ve had therapy,” Rita says. “We’ve had fights. We’ve had nights where we slept in separate bedrooms. But we always wake up choosing each other.” Tom adds, “Marriage isn’t a fairy tale. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure. And every day, I pick her.”

As the sun set on Rita’s 69th, the couple sat on their terrace, feet entwined, watching the lanterns drift toward the stars. Tom raised a glass of Assyrtiko. “To the woman who makes 69 look like the new 29,” he toasted. Rita clinked her glass, eyes sparkling. “And to the man who still makes my heart skip like it’s 1981.”

In an industry built on illusions, their love is the rarest special effect: real, raw, and unbreakable. Happy birthday, Rita Wilson. The world is brighter because you’re in it—and Tom Hanks will spend every year making sure we never forget it.