Ellen Pompeo & Chris Ivery
Looks like it was record producer Chris Ivery who asked series lead Ellen Pompeo to pick me, choose me, love me after they crossed paths at a Los Angeles grocery store in 2003.
“I was with my mutual friend,” the actress—who’s starred as Meredith Grey since the series’ 2005 premiere—detailed during a 2022 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show.
So, after sharing a quick hello with her fellow Boston-area native, “He called me a bunch of times, and I wouldn’t call him back. And then he said, ‘You’re rude. You won’t call me back,’ and I said, ‘Well, because I’m not trying to go on a date with you.’ And he said, ‘Who’s trying to go on a date with you? I don’t even know you.'”
Basically, she continued, “We had a fight first. That’s kind of always the way to my heart, is like, piss me off and I’m all yours.”
Married four years later, the pair welcomed daughter Stella in 2009, her little sister Sienna in 2014 and son Christopher in 2016.
“We’re sort of two kids who made it out and then landed in Hollywood and jumped on this ride,” Pompeo said of their journey during a 2025 appearance on Alex Cooper‘s Call Her Daddy podcast. “We just couldn’t believe that something was actually happening—that it was great, that I had this great job and we were getting to travel all over the world.”
