Eric Stonestreet says that one of his Modern Family costar’s relationships inspired him to find true love.The actor recalled the moment to fellow costar Jesse Tyler Ferguson, where he thought, “I want to be those people.”Stonestreet ended up marrying his longtime partner Lindsay Schweitzer in a surprise ceremony in September 2025.<\/p>\n
Modern Family<\/a>\u00a0changed Eric Stonestreet<\/a>‘s life in more ways than one.\n<\/p>\n The sitcom made the Kansas City-born actor into a star after he was cast to play the irreverent family man Cameron Tucker in 2009. He won back-to-back Emmys for the performance the following two years, but it wasn’t until the middle of his decade-long Modern Family run that another change came upon him.\n<\/p>\n “I had this really vivid moment at a CAA Emmy party,” Stonestreet told his former on-screen husband, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, on a recent episode of his Dinner’s On Me\u00a0<\/a>podcast<\/a>. “Ty Burrell<\/a> and [his wife Holly Burrell], Rich Sommer and his wife were over there sitting down. I’m bebopping around the room, talking to people and meeting people and doing what you do. And I have this very distinct memory of looking over and being like, ‘I want to be those people.'”\n<\/p>\n Ty Burrell and Holly Burrell in 2017.<\/p>\n Rob Latour\/Variety\/Penske Media\/Getty<\/p>\n “I know you relate to this, which is I just didn’t want somebody that wanted to be at the party more than me,” Stonestreet told Ferguson, who said he understood the sentiment that as a public figure, you need someone grounded as a counterweight. Ferguson added that he has always been “very grateful that I met [husband Justin Mikita] at the beginning of the Modern Family journey,” else he would have had a lot more dinners like the kind Stonestreet described.\n<\/p>\n I just remember thinking, ‘That’s what I want to do,” Stonestreet continued. “I’ve told Ty, I told him that when I called to tell him that we’re getting married. I said, you don’t know it, but you and Holly… are very prominent in me getting on the direction of what I wanted to do.”\n<\/p>\n Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our\u00a0EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n The Burrells met in the 1990s, when they were both aspiring actors in Washington, D.C. They secretly married in 2000, and eventually adopted daughters Frances and Greta.\n<\/p>\n Ty told Redbook<\/a> in 2010 that he knew he wanted to marry Holly “on our first date. I was slow on the uptake, so it took me a couple of years.” That date? “It was the opening night of a play we were in. We were understudying lovers in\u00a0Twelfth Night.”\n<\/p>\n Lindsay Schweitzer with Eric Stonestreet in 2019.<\/p>\n Gregg DeGuire\/WireImage<\/p>\n Stonestreet, meanwhile, met pediatric nurse Lindsay Schweitzer at a charity event in their hometown of\u00a0Kansas City in 2016. Like Burrell, it was love at first sight.\n<\/p>\n The couple were engaged in 2020 and were married<\/a> in a surprise ceremony in 2025.\n<\/p>\n