When Alison Brie found an old computer, she realised her and Dave Franco's love story started years before they met

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Alison Brie and Dave Franco had been "dating for quite a while" when they realised they'd probably met years before they realised.

The couple were introduced to one another by a mutual friend named Jules who was known to throw a major Halloween party every year.

"We were kind of trying to do the math... like, we must have met before," Brie told Kelly Clarkson on her talk show in 2024.

Watch the video above.

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When the two realised they'd both been to Jules' Halloween party "many times", they began playing what Brie referred to as "Halloween costume roulette".

"I'm like, 'Do you remember when we were synchronised swimmers?' No," she laughed.

"I'm like, 'How about when we were California raisins, nobody knew what we were and everybody spent the night putting out different guesses for what the costume was?'

"To show people, to demonstrate, we spent the whole night gathering in little groups and singing I Heard It Through The Grapevine. And he was like 'Yes, I do remember that! I was at the party, me and my friend were Mario and Luigi'."

Brie said she didn't remember seeing Franco dressed as Mario at the party. Until she found an old computer.

On the computer was a video from that night of Brie and three of her friends singing I Heard It Through The Grapevine.

"It's tight on us," she said of the video clip.

"[But] who is in the back corner of the video but Mario and Luigi. The cutest Mario I've ever seen."

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Brie and Franco met back at the beginning of 2011 when they were introduced by Jules at New Orleans Mardi Gras.

Jules invited Franco to dinner with her, Alison and some other friends, and it seems she knew exactly what she was doing from the start.

"At dinner, booze is flowing readily and Dave is sitting next to Jules and Jules texts me," Brie explained with Franco beside her during GQ's couple's quiz.

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"So I check my texts under the table, I have a text from Jules that's like, 'You should hook up with Dave tonight'. And I'm like, 'Yes, please'."

According to Brie, Jules then showed Dave the text messages and pointed her out across the table.

"She goes, 'Don't tell her I said anything'," said Franco. " I was like, 'Great, I'm in'."

After dinner the group went out to some bars and according to Franco, he and Brie "were locked" for the rest of the night.

Since then, the couple have been pretty much inseparable.

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"Let me tell you there are all these things from early in our relationship that I go like, 'Wow I can't believe Dave stayed with me'," Brie joked during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show.

"Like there are some early voicemails that he has recorded where there's no game. It's like we had gone out a couple times and I'm leaving him voicemails that are like, 'I just like you so much, you're hot and like why do you wanna date me? I love it and I love you'," the actress laughed.

"This is like we barely knew each other, two weeks, and he was like, 'I'm in'."

Just three months into dating, Brie decided to throw Franco a surprise birthday party, failing to yet realise that the 21 Jump Street actor hates surprises.

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In 2017 Franco told The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon that while the gesture was "very sweet" and Brie "put a lot of effort into it," the guest list got a little bit out of control.

"My manager's assistant's sister's best friend was there and if you know me I'm a pretty private person and I don't like to be the centre of attention," he explained.

"So I freaked out and to alleviate my anxiety I decided to consume a weed cookie and it had the opposite effect where I ran downstairs and had the first panic attack of my life."

Franco spent the night of his party downstairs "throwing a tantrum" and telling his new girlfriend to "get everyone out of here".

"Alison and I, we still talk about how we survived my surprise party, we can survive anything," Franco laughed.

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By 2015, the couple were engaged.

Franco got down on one knee and popped the question during a trip to Big Sur, California, but he included an interesting prop in the moment.

When the couple had first met at Mardi Gras, Brie had been wearing a silver mask which she left with Franco, along with a note, at the end of the trip.

So, in the name of romance, Franco included a throwback to their first meeting five years prior, deciding to wear the mask when he popped the question.

Except their was one issue – Brie didn't recognise it.

During an interview with Larry King the Community actress shared that when Franco asked the question she "burst out laughing" and kept asking if he was serious before she was able to say yes.

According to Franco, the whole proposal was Brie asking what was happening and him "trying to explain how sweet it is that I kept the mask for five years".

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But despite the hiccups, the couple made it to the aisle, with Brie telling the New York Post in 2016 that she'd never been interested in marriage until she met her now husband.

Then, in March 2017, the couple said 'I do'.

Brie and Franco kept things low-key, still to this day not spilling many details on their wedding.

"It was great, it was really special," Franco told Entertainment Tonight shortly after tying the knot.

"It was intimate, and it was really fun."

"Something about being married made me feel so settled, almost more free, I guess, rather than like trapped," Brie told People just a few months after their wedding.

"It's great. So now, let's go do whatever we want. Onward and upward."

Over the years Franco and Brie have come to be known as one of the strongest couple's in Hollywood, even working together on several projects.

They first appeared together in 2017's The Little Hours, with Franco telling The Hollywood Reporter that the experience taught the couple that "Alison should not be on set while I'm having sex scenes with other women."

"I left for those," Brie chimed in. "I did leave for those."

Later that year they appeared in The Disaster Artist together, a film which Franco's brother James Franco directed and also starred in.

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Franco made his directorial debt in 2020 with The Rental, of course casting Brie in a starring role.

"We've acted together, and so we knew that we would get along well on a set, but we've obviously never worked together in this capacity," he told Moviemaker Magazine of directing his wife for the first time.

"But what I will say is that I've always known that she's an amazing actress."

Then, during Covid when the couple quarantined together, Brie says they began "doing a lot of writing together" telling People that the experience made them "closer than ever".

In August 2021 they announced that the project they'd been working on during quarantine was now coming to life.

They co-wrote a romantic comedy titled Somebody That I Used To Know, with Franco directing and Brie in the starring role.

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Now, in 2025, the couple have released another project. This time, a horror movie titled Together, written and directed by Aussie, Michael Shanks.

Brie told Vulture that the movie challenged them in a way they've never experienced before because "the nature of the horrors of this movie, the monster of this movie, is sort of within our characters," so it was a kind of physicality neither actor had ever worked with.

"But you know it was proof of how much we love each other because it really is the most amount of time we've ever spent on a job together, we've worked on a handful of things together," she said.

"But we love working together, I love working with Dave, he brings out the best in me as an actor. It was really fun to watch him do different things that I haven't seen him do as an actor before."

"Working with Alison is just the best and I think we really bring out the best in each other," Franco added of the experience during Vulture interview alongside Shanks and Brie.

"After most days of filming this movie we would look at each other and say 'We couldn't have done this with any one else' because of the intense level of intimacy in this film."

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