6 Celebrity Friends Who’ve Been Besties for Decades

Ken Jeong & Randall Park

Challenge each other to succeed, and to do good

Ken Jeong and Randall Park first got to know each other as up-and-coming comedians in the early 2000s.

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Before Community and The Masked Singer made Ken Jeong, 56, a household name, and Fresh Off the Boat brought Randall Park, 51, into millions of living rooms, they were young comics in an industry that kept Korean American actors mostly on the sidelines. Their friendship became a steady light in a business that usually left them in the dark.

They met in the early 2000s, when Park was running a small stand-up show at North Hollywood’s HaHa Comedy Club and booked Jeong — then still a full-time physician. Jeong had impressed Park so much onstage that it was “mind-blowing and upsetting” to learn he was equally brilliant in medicine. Park says he studied Jeong’s act, taking cues from his timing and presence. Years later, Jeong told Time he couldn’t have pursued his sitcom career on shows like Dr. Ken if it hadn’t been for Fresh Off the Boat.

When Jeong received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last fall, Park made a speech and pulled back the curtain just enough to show how much that mutual support has mattered. He kept things light, opening with a jab about Jeong’s sitcom paychecks, but then shifted to speak about his friend’s deep commitment to others — mentoring young Asian American artists and joining KultureCity, a nonprofit that supports children on the autism spectrum, including Park’s daughter. “He has the biggest heart,” Park said. “He’s always been there for me in my times of need, and he truly brings me so much joy.” When Jeong spoke at the event, all those years of laughter gave way to emotion. “I did not want to cry,” he said, smiling through it. “I did not want to cry.”

Tina Fey & Amy Poehler

Take that next leap, but always together

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler first met in 1993 when they both worked at an improv theater in Chicago.

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In improvisational comedy, “Yes, and…” means you accept your partner’s idea and build on it. For Tina Fey, 55, and Amy Poehler, 54, it’s more than a stage rule; it’s how they live. Since meeting at Chicago’s ImprovOlympic theater in 1993, they’ve instinctively answered each other’s leaps, not just with agreement but with “I see you and raise you.”

They clicked instantly (That lady is hot stuff, Poehler recalled thinking) and quickly upped the comedy ante with a two-woman sketch show about policewomen named Powderkeg and Shortfuse. It ran for exactly one performance, but their friendship was set. When Fey joined Saturday Night Live a few years later, she didn’t leave her comedy partner behind — she lobbied until Poehler joined too, and together they “yes, anded” their way to becoming the first female coanchors of “Weekend Update.”

“Sometimes Tina is like a very talented bungee-jumping expert,” Poehler once said. “All it takes is Tina to softly say, ‘We can do this, right?’ and I suddenly feel like I can jump off a bridge.” Teaming up also meant sidestepping competition. As Poehler told AARP, “Tina and I don’t have sisters, so we haven’t been trained to fight.” Their team mentality has only deepened with age. They were apprehensive about hosting the Golden Globes from opposite coasts during the pandemic (“I kept having these technological stress dreams,” Poehler admitted), but leaning into the bit got them through. “We figured, ‘Why don’t we get back in there and try it?’ ” Poehler said. Midshow, Fey, in New York, reached for Poehler — “Oh, I’ve missed you, my love” — as another hand from the split screen “nuzzled” Poehler in L.A.

With another “Sure, we’ll do it,” they launched their “Restless Leg” tour in 2023, marking more than 30 years of friendship — and never saying never — together. As Fey famously put it: “Say yes, and you’ll figure it out afterward.”

Snoop Dogg & Martha Stewart

Exit your bubble and enter theirs

Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart first met in 2008 on Stewart's show lifestyle-themed TV show.

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Friendship can flourish when you step outside your own mold. When Martha Stewart, now 84, and Snoop Dogg, 53, made cognac mashed potatoes and “green” brownies on The Martha Stewart Show in 2008, audiences were baffled. What could a domestic goddess and a West Coast rap legend possibly have in common? “I don’t even understand it,” Snoop said at the time. “I just have fun.”

Since then, they’ve built a bond by continually leaving their comfort zones — Snoop potting tomatoes, Stewart praising pot — without trying to change each other. “We really are BFFs,” Stewart told AARP in 2023. “It’s an education to get into the brain of someone like him.” As Snoop puts it: “We willing to try things.”

And the older they get, the more their mismatch makes sense. “He helps me with my stuff, and I help him with his stuff,” Stewart said on The Tonight Show. Sure, that includes business — they’ve teamed up for game shows, launched a line of wines, even gotten fake tattoos of each other’s faces for a commercial. But the loyalty runs deeper. When Rolling Stone left Snoop off its 50th-anniversary rap retrospective, Stewart is said to have erupted: “That was bulls---!” When gossip blogs hinted at a feud last year between Stewart and fellow food icon Ina Garten, Snoop shut it down: “Martha don’t fall out with people.”

Are they different? Absolutely, and that’s the point. In Stewart’s 84th-birthday video, she’s glamorous in black evening wear while Snoop, beside her, puffs a joint and gently kisses a cupcake. One glam, one gangsta — together, they’ve never looked better. True friends expand your world without asking you to shrink. “When we come together,” Snoop once said, “it’s a natural combination of love, peace and harmony.”

Martin Short & Steve Martin

Through all the laughs, let your care shine through

Martin Short and Steve Martin first worked together on the 1986 hit comedy "The Three Amigos."

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For Steve Martin and Martin Short, lovable roasting has been like oxygen in a 40-year bond extending from Three Amigos to Only Murders in the Building. Take their signature eulogy bit from SNL: “Wow! Not much of a turnout,” Martin, 80, sniffs at Short’s imaginary funeral. Short, 75, interrupts: “There are so many great things I could say about Steve Martin, but this hardly seems the time or place.”

Hilarious, yes, but their friendship thrives less on snark than on knowing when to cut the act. When Short’s wife, Nancy, died of cancer in 2010, Martin didn’t deflect — he composed “The Great Remember” on the banjo, a tender instrumental piece. They later staged a conversation about aging that morphed into their ongoing comedy tours. And when Martin became a first-time father at 67, Short (a father of three) showed up with genuine support and, OK, maybe a few punch lines about Martin being the oldest guy at the playground.

“With Steve, there’s a level of comfort I don’t have with anyone else,” Short said of Martin a few years back. “We can be goofy together, we can be serious together, and it all just works.” Martin is just as mushy. Short is “kind of the perfect person,” he has said. “If Marty can’t come, you cancel the party.”

Their friendship is a master class in male vulnerability cloaked in laughter. They vacation together with their families, play cribbage on tour buses and claim they’ve never had a single argument. “You have a perspective at this age that it’s not forever,” Short said recently. “So to feel great and healthy and have loved ones around you, you appreciate it.”