‘What a Long Beautiful Adventure’

“You are the most effective factor that ever occurred in my life,” the previous discuss present host wrote on Instagram of her longtime love

Ellen DeGeneres is celebrating 20 years with spouse Portia de Rossi following their transfer to the English countryside.

The former discuss present host, 66, and the retired actress, 51 — who formally moved from California to England’s celeb-favorite Cotswolds area this fall — are celebrating 20 years collectively, a milestone DeGeneres marked by posting a selfie of the couple snapped of their new dwelling.

Alongside the photograph, which exhibits the longtime couple cozying up to one another within the countryside, the comic additionally shared a heartfelt tribute for de Rossi, writing a candy message in regards to the previous, current and way forward for their relationship.

Related: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s Relationship Timeline

“20 years in the past at the moment we started this relationship not realizing what a protracted stunning journey this may be,” she started the caption of the Dec. 1 Instagram submit. “You are the most effective factor that ever occurred in my life. You deal with me. You assist me see the great in the whole lot. You assist to information me and choose me up once I really feel off or down.”

“You are a stupendous soul that I’m so very grateful to have as a accomplice to navigate this loopy life with,” DeGeneres continued. “My spouse. My finest buddy. The love of my life. Thank you for being you and loving me. So completely satisfied we get to journey and discover the world collectively within the subsequent 20 years, and looking out ahead to our first snowy Christmas.”

And, referring to the heavy rain that Storm Bert not too long ago dropped at the U.Ok., she added: “P.S. for these of you involved, our UK farmhouse did NOT flood.”

De Rossi, who doesn’t submit continuously on social media, didn’t mark the couple’s milestone on social media — although her most up-to-date Instagram submit, shared in January, was a candy birthday tribute to DeGeneres.

Related: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Let Loose on Date Night at English Pub After Leaving the U.S. for Cotswolds

The couple’s many years collectively might be traced all the way in which again to 2001, once they met backstage at a live performance.

“I bear in mind pondering that she [DeGeneres] was the best, most fascinating, stunning, funniest particular person I’d ever met,” de Rossi recalled to PEOPLE in 2021. “But I, on the time, was closeted; I actually wasn’t snug with my sexuality. I simply knew that being together with her can be a little bit of a factor for me, so we did not get collectively after that for about three years.”

After reconnecting on the the VH1 Big in ’04 Awards, the pair struck up a romance. “We noticed one another and began speaking, and that was it,” DeGeneres instructed PEOPLE. “She opened up and stated she’d been fascinated with me. And it stunned me. It was a giant deal for her to be seen with me.”

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The pair shortly grew to become one of many highest-profile LGBTQ {couples}, and tied the knot in August 2008 after same-sex marriage was legalized in California. De Rossi provides full credit score to her comic spouse — who very publicly got here out in 2001 — for serving to her understand that there’s “nothing unsuitable with being homosexual.”

“I simply bought to a degree the place I selected love over the rest. This was a once-in-a-lifetime feeling,” the previous actress stated in 2021. “And Ellen actually did assist me by means of it simply by being there and making me really feel extra snug about who I’m — like there was nothing unsuitable with being homosexual.”

“I feel that is the primary time in my life I felt that was true,” she added.