Julia Roberts and Danny Moder in 2020.Photo:Rob Latour/Variety/Penske Media
Rob Latour/Variety/Penske Media
This article was originally published on July, 11, 2002.
Her friends thought they were gathering for a late-night drink. Some would probably have preferred to just hit the hay.
By midnight it was an expectant bunch (some holding sleepy toddlers) who sank into an assortment of lawn chairs arranged in a semicircle outside the 19th-century morada — a small adobe religious meeting house — on her property. The sight of flickering candles and Chinese lanterns signaled something was up. But not until Roberts and her beau, Danny Moder, stepped under an arch made from white and pink silk sheaths and into a circle of scattered red, white and pink rose petals did most guests understand what exactly was about to happen.
As the realization spread, “there was a cheer, a sort of wave of cheers that echoed against the mountains,” says one close friend. “Danny got down on one knee and said, ‘In front of everyone we love, I want to know, will you marry me?’ And Julia grabbed her heart and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ And all the guests were saying ‘Yes, yes, yes’ along with her. The canopy was billowing. It was such a magical, intimate gathering, it felt like we were eavesdropping, like we were invited into someone’s secret.”
Or trying to. “Somewhere in the middle, someone dropped a glass and a person shouted out, ‘Mazel Tov!’ ” says one guest. “There was a lot of laughter.” And a fair bit of friskiness too. “Julia and Danny kissed throughout the ceremony,” says the guest. “They kept asking, ‘Is it okay if we kiss?’ ”
Judging from the postnuptial whooping that woke up neighbors at around 12:30 a.m., the answer was yes. Just as Hirsch happily declared Moder and Roberts husband and wife, so too did her longtime friend and business partner Elaine Goldsmith Thomas, along with husband Dan Thomas, eagerly serve as witnesses on the couple’s marriage certificate. “There was great relief,” says a close Roberts friend, “complete and utter joy that these two people found each other.”
In the past, even some of Roberts’s friends said she seemed skittish about settling down. After the ceremony those thoughts seemed as distant as the coyotes howling in the sagebrush. “She found the right person,” says a guest. “There wasn’t a shred of doubt about that on the property.”
Roberts and Moder first met on the set ofThe Mexicanin the early spring of 2000. At the time, he was four years into a marriage with makeup artist Vera Steimberg Moder, 29. Though those close to the family say the union was already strained, it was, they add, Moder’s growing bond with Roberts — he helped her through her breakup with actorBenjamin Brattmonths later — that finally led him to file for divorce last June.
Danny Moder and Julia Roberts in 2022.SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty
In June, Roberts asked publicist and friend Marcy Engelman to call Roberts’s favorite Manhattan hairdresser, Serge Normant, and makeup artist Genevieve Herr — claiming that she needed them for a photo shoot. Local caterers from the Wooden Spoon and members of the Austin, Texas-based Toni Price Band penned in the date for what they thought was a July 4 barbecue. As the weeks ticked down to days, Roberts herself got down to business. Four days before the ceremony, the T-shirt-and-overall-clad star headed for the Arroyo Seco Mercantile and bought $200 worth of steel buckets — just the things in which to plant the shrubs she picked up the following day at Blossoms nursery. Next stop: Raley’s supermarket, where she loaded three carts of food into her light gold Land Cruiser. Finally, the day before guests arrived, Hollywood’s $20 million-per-picture powerhouse was on her hands and knees, doing prewedding weeding around her property. “She could have (gotten married) anywhere, at a castle or the fanciest hotel,” says a friend. “But that isn’t her.”
Equally unbelievable: Less than eight hours later, says a friend, the “blissful and jubilant” Mrs. Moder was back in jeans, cooking breakfast pancakes for the guests’ kids, who later made a makeshift merry-go-round out of her horse walker. That night the Toni Price band, a favorite of Moder’s since he first heard them play at the Continental Club in Austin, belted out country and blues tunes. Says guitarist Casper Rawls: “It was just like a backyard barbecue at anybody’s home in America.”
Not counting, of course, the sight of Roberts singing along to the band’s waltz “Don’t You Think I Feel It Too?” as she danced with her new husband. Between dips and toasts — including one from Danny’s father, Mike, 65, a Hollywood producer (Beverly Hills Cop, Crimson Tide), “welcoming Julia into the family,” says a friend — Roberts and Moder flitted from table to table like the hummingbirds that flew down, drawn to the sweet peas, peonies and geraniums in terra-cotta pots on each table. “She was giggly and giddy,” says a friend of Roberts’s. “Danny was hugging everyone. They kept referring to each other as ‘my wife’ and ‘my husband.’ ” When they came up for air, that is. Says singer Price: “Every time I looked the two of them were smooching.”
Later in the evening the group turned to R&B.Bruce Willis, who had arrived that afternoon with his daughter Tallulah, 8, joined the band onstage, playing harmonica and singing a few verses of “Hound Dog” and “Chain of Fools.” “He sounded great,” says Price.
When they’ll start making space for the “gaggle” of kids Roberts has said she wants is hard to guess. Without a new movie scheduled until the dramaMona Lisa’s Smilestarts filming in October, Roberts is just planning to enjoy her new husband and life her own way. “They promised to take care of each other,” says one longtime friend. “Julia’s genuinely happy.”
source: people.com
