Nope Star Steven Yeun Met His Wife 13 Years Ago When He Was Bartending

Some of Steven Yeun’s best roles have been mired in supernatural invasions. In Jordan Peele’s Nope, out July 22, aliens invade earth and Yeun has to somehow escape homicidal extraterrestrials. While little else is known about the project since Peele tends to be secretive about his films, Yeun fans are likely still reeling from his turn as Glenn Rhee on The Walking Dead. The fan favorite character died protecting his partner Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and unborn child from the zombie outbreak, proving that he was a devoted family man ’til the end. Though he doesn’t need to do any undead slaying in real life, the 38-year-old actor is also a devoted father and husband to his longtime partner Joana Pak.

Pak, 35, is a professional photographer who owns a photography business called Jo Pakka photography. Going even further back on her resume reveals that she studied at Columbia College in Chicago, which happens to be where she and Yeun first met in 2009. “She walked into the bar where I was a really sh*tty bartender, and it was kismet. After that, I saw her every day for six months,” Yeun revealed in a 2017 feature with Martha Stewart Weddings. After that, they made a long-distance relationship work as she stayed in Chicago and he moved to Los Angeles and Atlanta to work on TWD. “He was based in Atlanta for half the year. I was in Chicago. We were kind of everywhere,” Pak told the outlet.

Yeun proposed in August 2015, and the couple tied the knot in December 2016 at the Paramour Estate in Los Angeles. Attended by some of Yeun’s co-stars, the intimate ceremony was filled with odes to their Korean heritage and hometowns of Michigan (Yeun) and Arkansas (Pak).

They wed just six weeks after the actor ended his six-season run on the popular AMC series, putting a bit of a silver lining on Glenn Rhee’s gruesome fate. And back when Glenn’s widow was expecting a baby on The Walking Dead, Pak herself was also pregnant with the couple’s first child. So even if Glenn couldn't get the happy ending he deserved, it should be gratifying for fans to see the actor attain the peace and happiness that eluded his character in the zombie apocalypse.

Pak and Yeun now have a son, 5-year-old Jude Malcolm, and a 3-year-old daughter, whose name they didn’t reveal when she was born in 2019. The parents are incredibly private when it comes to their personal lives and their family, and their Instagram accounts have a combined total of three posts. Pak did maintain a portfolio on VSCO, which includes candid shots of her husband and GIFs of their children, but she stopped updating the account in 2017.