Ellen DeGeneres Celebrates twentieth Anniversary with Portia de Rossi After Transfer to England

Ellen DeGeneres is celebrating twenty years with spouse Portia de Rossi following their transfer to the English countryside.

The previous speak present host, 66, and the retired actress, 51 — who formally moved from California to England’s celeb-favorite Cotswolds area this fall — are celebrating 20 years collectively, a milestone DeGeneres marked by posting a selfie of the couple snapped of their new dwelling.

Alongside the picture, which exhibits the longtime couple cozying up to one another within the countryside, the comic additionally shared a heartfelt tribute for de Rossi, writing a candy message concerning the previous, current and way forward for their relationship.

“20 years in the past at this time we started this relationship not realizing what a protracted lovely journey this could be,” she started the caption of the Dec. 1 Instagram put up. “You’re the neatest thing that ever occurred in my life. You care for me. You assist me see the nice in the whole lot. You assist to information me and decide me up once I really feel off or down.”

“You’re a lovely soul that I’m so very grateful to have as a companion to navigate this loopy life with,” DeGeneres continued. “My spouse. My finest pal. The love of my life. Thanks for being you and loving me. So glad we get to journey and discover the world collectively within the subsequent 20 years, and searching ahead to our first snowy Christmas.”

And, referring to the heavy rain that Storm Bert just lately dropped at the U.Okay., she added: “P.S. for these of you involved, our UK farmhouse did NOT flood.”

De Rossi, who doesn’t put up often on social media, didn’t mark the couple’s milestone on social media — although her most up-to-date Instagram put up, shared in January, was a candy birthday tribute to DeGeneres.

The couple’s a long time collectively may be traced all the best way again to 2001, after they met backstage at a live performance.

“I bear in mind pondering that she [DeGeneres] was the best, most fascinating, lovely, funniest particular person I might ever met,” de Rossi recalled to PEOPLE in 2021. “However I, on the time, was closeted; I actually wasn’t snug with my sexuality. I simply knew that being along with her could be a little bit of a factor for me, so we did not get collectively after that for about three years.”

After reconnecting on the the VH1 Massive in ’04 Awards, the pair struck up a romance. “We noticed one another and began speaking, and that was it,” DeGeneres instructed PEOPLE. “She opened up and stated she’d been occupied with me. And it stunned me. It was an enormous deal for her to be seen with me.”

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The pair shortly grew to become one of many highest-profile LGBTQ {couples}, and tied the knot in August 2008 after same-sex marriage was legalized in California. De Rossi provides full credit score to her comic spouse — who very publicly got here out in 2001 — for serving to her notice that there’s “nothing incorrect with being homosexual.”

“I simply received to some extent the place I selected love over anything. This was a once-in-a-lifetime feeling,” the previous actress stated in 2021. “And Ellen actually did assist me via it simply by being there and making me really feel extra snug about who I’m — like there was nothing incorrect with being homosexual.”

“I feel that is the primary time in my life I felt that was true,” she added.