The Talker: Do age differences matter in marriage? - KMSP-TV

Hollywood has a long tradition of May-December romances—when there's a considerable age difference between the two people in the relationship.

Cindy Crawford recently said in an interview that age was the reason she and Richard Gere ended up divorced. She was just 22 when she met Gere and says, at that age, she was still figuring out who she was. Gere at the time was 37.

Crawford says she may have changed too much during their marriage, which lasted four years.

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher lasted six years before splitting. She's fifteen years older. The divorce is still pending and seems to be getting ugly. A new report cites a source that claims the couple tried to have a baby, but had trouble conceiving. The source says more believes if they had a baby, they would have lasted.

There are success stories, though. The Chicago native Harrison Ford is 70 and married to 48-year-old Calista Flockhart. They've been together eleven years and waited eight years to get married. They are raising a child who Flockhart had adopted before they met.

In the category of odd, Woody Allen has been with Soon Yi-Previn—who used to be his step-daughter--for 21 years. Allen's ex-wife Mia Farrow had adopted Previn and now Allen and Previn are married. They have two adopted children themselves.

What can you say about Hugh Hefner? He's 86 and his wife Crystal Harris is 26. Though, they've only been married three months.

There's limited research into May-December romance. One study looked at couples where a woman is at least ten years older than a man. It found the age difference was more significant to the outside world than the couple itself and that women liked the vitality of the younger men, while the men liked the maturity and confidence of the older women.

Another study found couple's with age differences worry more than others about the possibility of infidelity.