The other love story behind Mickey and Minnie Mouse

Mickey and Minnie Mouse are, of course, one of Hollywood’s great love stories.

It turns out there’s a great love story behind the scenes, too.

The actors who voiced Mickey and Minnie were married for almost 20 years. In and out of work, they were “attached at the heart.”

Wayne Allwine was a foley artist and sound editor for the Walt Disney Company when he auditioned for the role of Mickey Mouse in 1977. He became the third person to voice Mickey, after Walt Disney and Jimmy MacDonald. Russi Taylor stepped in as Minnie in 1986.

Allwine and Taylor met at work and married in 1991. They were together until Allwine’s death in 2009.

Taylor described their first relationship to Variety last year:

“We met in the hallway when I was going in to do ‘Totally Minnie.’ He was married and I was married at the time. He said, ‘I’m so glad I’m going to have a Minnie now.’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s pretty exciting,’ and off he went. I didn’t know that he was unhappy and he didn’t know that I was unhappy.” A couple of years later, when they were free from other relationships, they were working on a project together, “and, hello!”

“We just started hanging out as pals, and the next thing you know, we were an item,” Taylor recalls. “We just had fun. He was the best. He was a wonderful man, he was a good man, and he was a kind man. He was very, very strong and very, very male. And that voice came out of him. It’s like, ‘Huh?’”

Taylor and Allwine, who married in 1991, were always together, often sitting in the booth while one of them was recording. “Someone once said to us, ‘What’s wrong with you guys? Are you attached at the hip?’ I said, ‘No, we’re attached at the heart.’”

After Allwine’s death, Taylor went back to work on “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” where the crew pieced together Allwine’s voice work from previous recordings so he could complete the season. “It was one of the kindest things I’ve ever known in my life,” Taylor told Variety.

Taylor continues to voice Minnie — as well as other Disney characters — today.