Anne Stringfield: Everything to Know About Steve Martin’s Wife

Anne Stringfield is a writer who spent years working quietly at one of the most famous magazines in the world, and she has kept that same quiet style ever since she married one of the most famous comedians in the world. She is Steve Martin’s wife, and their marriage, which began with a surprise wedding in 2007, is known as one of the most private in Hollywood.

Many people first hear her name and know almost nothing else about her. That is largely by her own choice, but the documented record still tells a clear story: a girl from Pensacola, Florida, a strong education, a real career in magazine writing and fact checking, and a love story that began, of all ways, with fact checking phone calls. Here is everything that is reliably known about Anne Stringfield.

Quick Facts

Early Life and Education

Anne Stringfield was born in 1972 in Pensacola, a city on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Published profiles of her family say her father, Dr. James Stringfield, worked as a pulmonologist, a doctor specialising in the lungs, and her mother, Margo Stringfield, worked as an archaeologist connected with the University of West Florida. Anne grew up with a younger sister, Laura. It was, by all accounts, an academic household, and books and study were taken seriously.

She attended Pensacola High School and then moved to North Carolina for college. She studied at Davidson College, a well regarded liberal arts college, and graduated in 1994. Profiles of her education report that she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honour society in the United States, which is only open to students with very strong academic records. That detail matters because it matches the career that followed: precise, careful work with words and facts.

Unlike many people who later become known through a famous partner, Anne’s path after college was her own. She moved to New York, the center of American magazine publishing, and built a career there in her own name, years before the public had any reason to connect her with Steve Martin.

A Career at The New Yorker

Anne Stringfield worked at The New Yorker, the famous magazine known for its reporting, fiction, humour and extremely strict standards of accuracy. Her job was fact checking, one of the least glamorous and most trusted roles in serious publishing. A fact checker goes through a writer’s work line by line, testing names, dates, claims and details against sources, and phones people to confirm that what is written is true.

It is work that suits a certain kind of mind: patient, exact and happy to stay out of the spotlight while making other people’s work better. Colleagues and profiles describe her as very good at it. Alongside the checking desk, she also wrote. Her writing appeared in Vogue, and she wrote reviews covering art and off Broadway theatre. Later in her career she developed a strong interest in art, an interest she shares deeply with her husband, who is a well known art collector.

Her public writing record thins out after her marriage, and profiles note that her last credited contributions to The New Yorker were around 2012. That is not unusual for someone whose family life grew at the same time. What should be clear is that she was not discovered by fame. She had a profession, a reputation inside a demanding newsroom, and a life in New York that was fully formed before her marriage made her name searchable.

How Anne Stringfield Met Steve Martin

The meeting is the detail everyone loves, and it comes from Martin himself. In the mid 2000s, Anne was assigned to fact check a comedy piece that Steve Martin had written for The New Yorker. Fact checking a humour piece means calling the writer and going through the jokes and references one by one, which is a strange and funny job when the writer is Steve Martin.

Martin has said that the two of them talked on the phone for about a year before they ever met in person. The calls were work calls that slowly became something more: two funny, bookish, fairly shy people discovering that they got along. Martin has described both of them as introverted, and friends quoted in profiles have noted that she reminded people of a younger Tina Fey, a comparison Fey herself joked about warmly in a tribute speech to Martin in 2015.

After they finally met, they dated for about three years, keeping the relationship almost completely out of the press. There is a large age difference between them, about 26 years, which drew comment when the marriage became public, but by Martin’s own account the connection was built first on conversation, humour and shared interests, long before it was a public story at all.

The Surprise Wedding of 2007

On July 28, 2007, the couple invited around 75 guests to Martin’s home in Los Angeles for what the guests believed was a party. It was, in fact, their wedding. The surprise ceremony was officiated by Bob Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska and a friend of Martin. Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, served as best man, and Anne’s sister was her bridesmaid. Guests included famous friends such as Tom Hanks, Diane Keaton, Carl Reiner and Eugene Levy. Anne wore a Vera Wang gown, and the couple later honeymooned in the French West Indies, as reported at the time.

The surprise format suited them perfectly. There were no magazine deals, no advance publicity and no red carpet. Most of the world learned that Steve Martin had married only after the wedding had already happened. It was the second marriage for Martin, who had previously been married to the actress Victoria Tennant from 1986 to 1994, and the first for Anne.

Since then, the couple have appeared together only occasionally in public, at selected events such as the American Film Institute tribute to Martin in 2015. Reports over the years have noted that Anne has never made a habit of red carpets, and the pair are more likely to be connected in the news with art exhibitions and quiet public outings than with parties.

Family Life and a Private Daughter

In December 2012, Anne and Steve Martin welcomed their daughter. She was Anne’s first child and Martin’s first child as well; he became a father at the age of 67. The couple kept the news quiet at first, in keeping with how they handle everything personal, and their daughter’s name, Mary, became public later through reporting. Martin has said in interviews that having a child later in life was fantastic, and that he believes he would have been a distracted father earlier, when his career came first.

This article keeps to that brief, public record on purpose. The Martins have chosen to raise their daughter away from cameras and public attention so that she can have a normal childhood, and Martin said plainly in his 2024 documentary that people understand not wanting to show your children on camera. Beyond the fact of her birth in 2012, details of her life are private and are not reported here.

Family life appears to have changed Martin in ways he enjoys describing. The wild and crazy guy of 1970s comedy became, in his sixties and seventies, a husband and father who talks about home with real warmth, while continuing to work in films, television, books and music. Anne is consistently described in his remarks as the center of that calmer life.

Life Today

Anne Stringfield still keeps a low profile. She has no public social media presence to speak of, gives no interviews of her own, and is seen mainly at her husband’s side at major honours and in connection with the art world they both enjoy. The couple share a serious interest in art collecting, including Indigenous Australian art, some of which they have loaned for public exhibitions. She has also been linked in some profiles to the Los Angeles art museum world, although specific trustee claims vary between sources and are treated here as unconfirmed.

Some sources credit her with small on screen appearances connected to Martin’s television series Only Murders in the Building, in a minor role. Those credits appear in entertainment databases and biography sites, but they have not been widely covered by major outlets, so readers should treat the detail as reported rather than firmly documented.

What is firmly documented is the shape of her life: a Pensacola childhood, a Davidson education, years of exacting work at The New Yorker, writing for Vogue, a marriage that began over a fact checking desk, and a family raised carefully out of view. In an age when fame is usually chased, Anne Stringfield’s steady refusal to chase it is the most distinctive thing about her.

You may also read: Kyle Baugher: The Full Story of Kelly Reilly’s Husband

FAQs

What does Anne Stringfield do for a living?

She is a writer and a former fact checker at The New Yorker magazine. Her writing has also appeared in Vogue, and she has written reviews about art and off Broadway theatre.

How did Anne Stringfield meet Steve Martin?

She was assigned to fact check one of his comedy pieces for The New Yorker in the mid 2000s. Martin has said they talked on the phone for about a year before meeting in person, and they dated for about three years before marrying.

When did Anne Stringfield marry Steve Martin?

They married on July 28, 2007, in a surprise ceremony at Martin’s Los Angeles home, in front of about 75 guests who had been invited to what they thought was a party.

Do Anne Stringfield and Steve Martin have children?

Yes. They have one daughter, born in December 2012. The couple keep her life private, and she is raised away from public attention.

Final Thoughts

Anne Stringfield’s story is not a mystery so much as a choice. The facts that exist are solid and interesting on their own: a Florida upbringing in an academic family, an honours degree from Davidson College, trusted work at The New Yorker, writing in Vogue, and a marriage to Steve Martin that grew out of a year of phone calls about his jokes. She has never tried to turn her husband’s fame into a brand of her own, and the few gaps in her public record exist because she prefers them there. For readers, the respectful conclusion is also the accurate one: she is a writer who married a comedian, built a family with him, and kept the life they share for themselves.

Featured photo: Steve Martin – photo by David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons