Like Dolly Parton and Carl Thomas Dean, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, and many more celebrities, Michael Caine and his wife Shakira have one of the longest marriages in Hollywood. But they met in interesting circumstances over forty years ago.

Caine, with his distinctive Cockney accent, is one of those actors who could pop up anywhere. He can play anything from Alfred in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, and Arthur in Kingsman: Secret Service, to smaller roles like the helicopter driver in the God awful Jaws: The Revenge and Austin Powers' dad.

He's had a busy career his whole life, so how did he have the time to settle down with a girl he barely knew and start a successful 46-year marriage? Here's what we know about their long-time relationship.

He First Saw Her An Ad

Before she was Shakira Caine, Shakira Baksh lived in Guyana. When she was sixteen she left school got a job as a secretary at a U.S. Information Service office. When the anti-American protests started she was caught in the crossfire, receiving a scare on the face, and wound up losing her job because the building had been destroyed.

After everything happened her main goal was to move out of Guyana. So she registered in a beauty contest and won the title of "Miss Guyana" and then later competed in the "Miss World" competition in 1967. She won third place.

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Even though she didn't win first place, her experience in the competitions helped her gain an international modeling career, and shortly after she found herself living in London. In her various campaigns as a model, she was able to be featured in the ad that Caine first spotted her in.

But in the time before Caine met his future wife, he was married to his first wife, Patricia Haines, but they separated in 1962. During this time in his career, life was tough and he could barely get any acting gigs. He took any small job he could until he landed his breakout role in Zulu.

Then in 1971, he saw Baksh in an ad and knew right then and there that he had to find her... and marry her.

He explained what was going through his head at that moment in his biography. It was in the evening and he and his friend Paul were watching TV. Then an ad came on for Maxwell House coffee, and something caught his eye.

He saw a girl dancing in the background and was mesmerized. "My heart started pounding and my palms became sweaty," he said. He then got down on his knees in from of the TV to get a better look at her close-up shot. "This girl is amazing," he told his friend. "I want to meet her."

Interestingly enough his friend Paul knew who she was and told Caine that she lived in Brazil. When Caine asked if he could come the next time he went, Paul said yes. Caine then tried to phone Maxwell House to see who did the commercial, but apparently, he was too excited and instead headed to the pub to get some liquid courage.

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At the pub, he bumped into a friend and told him that he'd fallen in love. When Caine explained further, his friend told him that he actually worked at the company that made the commercial. He said Caine didn't have to go to Brazil because the mystery girl lived in London.

He Used Questionable Methods To Get Her To Meet Him

Caine allegedly called Baksh eleven times in a row, asking her to meet him, but she said no every time. She eventually conceded though and met him shortly after.

"I fell in love with her in about eight minutes. It took her two hours to fall in love with me," Caine told Radio Times. "She saved my life, really."

She saved his life because he was living a not so sober life of a celebrity. But when he met her he wanted to change all that. "She didn’t tell me to give up drinking, I just wanted to be sober and alive with her," he told The Telegraph.

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He told People in 1976, "If you’ve led my life in the past now is the time when you start to get it together and become a valuable entity as a husband and a family man. If I’d tried to do that at 17, this is the age when it would fall apart."

Caine was not what Baksh expected. "He was everything I didn’t expect," she said. "I had just seen him in Get Carter and he seemed so aggressive and ruthless. Instead, I found him charming and very gentle, someone whom I’d like to spend part of my life with. Michael was at that time still very much against marriage."

They ended up marrying in 1973 and shortly after they had their daughter Natasha.

Soon Caine found that he couldn't be anywhere without his family, so he brought them to work with him. Eventually, he was able to go to a location to film but that doesn't mean he didn't miss them. "I just love to go home, no matter where I am, the most luxurious hotel suite in the world, I love to go home."

The reason their marriage has worked so well all these many years is that they work together. "We have a genuine partnership. No male chauvinism; no women’s lib," Caine said.

"While I don’t regret my past," he concluded, "I would not want to change the present. When a man has got a missus like mine, you don’t have to look in any other direction."

Baksh was by his side when he was knighted in 2000, and accompanies him on all his films. Who can say they met their other half in the way that the Caines did? It was like something out of a movie.

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