Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre celebrate wedding anniversary after 'tough' year: 'My ride or die'

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Sabrina Dhowre and Idris Elba celebrated their second wedding anniversary on April 25, 2021. (Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic)

Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre celebrated their second wedding anniversary with gratitude, one year after their recovery from COVID-19.

"I love you so much, the last year has been one of the toughest of my life and I only got through it because of you. @sabrinaelba my ride or die," the Concrete Cowboys star, 48, wrote on Instagram, sharing a photo of the couple mock biting a cookie iced with "Happy anniversary" lettering. On her page, Dhowre, 30, wrote, "To many more," alongside a mirror selfie.

The couple got engaged in 2018 after a one-year courtship and wed in 2019, in a beautiful ceremony in Marrakesh, Morocco. As Dhowre told Vogue, “My family is from east Africa and Idris’s is from west Africa, so we thought it would be fun to meet somewhere in between.”

But newlywed life tested the couple, as both came down with COVID-19, one of the earliest public celebrity cases. "I don't suffer any residual effects and during my time with COVID, I was asymptomatic," Elba told USA Today in March 2020. "But I guess I feel incredibly lucky to have not gone down the worst route and thus it's given me a slightly different perspective on life, a little bit more of a new lease on life. There are things that I've always wanted to do and haven't done that I'm doing and want to do and pursuing. Personal things, small goals, things that I just put aside, things that I just said, 'Oh, I'll do that one day,' but now I'm doing."

After Elba tested positive, he did not isolate from his wife, as advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fending off criticism for their mutual decision.

"Just for clarification, Sabrina wanted to be by my side," Elba explained in a Twitter video last year. "As much as we talked about her not coming to where I am, she did and wanted to. And I love her even more for it and I would do the same for her." Elba further explained that he could not turn down his wife's support during that time.

While Dhowre later tested positive, she did not regret staying with her husband. "I could have made the decision to put myself, maybe, in a separate room or stay away, and I'm sure that people are making those decisions. And they're tough decisions to make," she told Oprah Winfrey. "But I made the decision to want to be with him and, you know, still touch him."

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