Stan and Joan Lee's Amazing 69-Year Love Story: 'She Was the Girl I Had Been Drawing All My Life'
In 1979, Spider-Man creator Stan Lee, then 56, and his wife Joan Boocock, also 56, had been happily married for over 30 years when they opened up to PEOPLE about their unique love story—which at first almost didn’t happen.
The couple met in 1947, when Lee, who at the time had already risen the ranks at Marvel and had a reputation for being a ladies man, went to check out a “gorgeous redhead” that a cousin had suggested he try and date. Joan Clayton Boocock, a hat model, answered the door instead. Lee said he took one Joan and declared “I love you!” The problem? Joan was already married to someone else.
RELATED: Stan Lee, the Comic Book Legend Behind Marvel, Dies at 95
Still, Joan confessed to PEOPLE that she wasn’t all that into her original husband. “I had only known him 24 hours when we decided to get married,” she said. “I many aspects it was a great marriage, but after living with him a year I was finding him sort of boring…”
However, she found Lee thrilling. “He wore a marvelous floppy had and scarf and spouted Omar Khayyam when he took me for a hamburger at Prexy’s,” she said. “He reminded me of that beautiful man, [British actor] Leslie Howard.” After two weeks of dating and falling head over heels, Lee proposed to Joan. He said, “But first I had to send her to Reno for a divorce.”
When Lee heard there was a rich cowboy in Reno who was also interested in Joan, he went out there and convinced her to choose him. The couple were married soon after by the same judge who granted Joan’s divorce. Lee told the Hollywood Reporter in 2016—after 67 years of marriage—that he knew instantly that he knew Joan was the one, because she exactly resembled the dream woman he grew up drawing.
RELATED: Stan Lee’s Tumultuous Last Days: From ‘Occasional Spats’ with Daughter to a $1 Billion Lawsuit
“There was one girl I drew,” he said. “One body and face and hair. It was my idea of what a girl should be. The perfect woman,” Lee said. He added that when he saw Joan in real life, he decided it was fate. “She was the girl I had been drawing all my life.”
The couple lived in Long Island for 19 years, raising their daughter Joanie. (They lost another daughter, Jan, in infancy several days after she was born.) They later relocated to New York City while Lee toiled at Marvel, co-creating some of the most iconic comic book characters like Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and the Incredible Hulk.
Lee had said it was Joan who inspired him to create relatable characters that lived in the real world, and had real-life problems. She also served as the inspiration for Peter Parker’s first love.
However, in a 2011 interview, Lee joked that Joan wasn’t even into comic books.
“My wife and I are really so close,” he said in the interview. “And yet, I’m not sure if she’s ever read a story I wrote. She’s not into comics at all. She loves things like decorating. She’s the perfect wife for me because I spend so much time writing when I’m home, and I imagine another woman might be saying things like, “How come we never go anywhere? Why don’t we take vacations! You never take me anywhere!”
Lee added, “But Joanie, her house is her toy. She plays with the house. She could spend all her time rearranging the furniture,” Lee said. “She can always keep herself busy, which is wonderful for me, so I don’t feel guilty when I’m in my room writing.”
Lee also noted that when people asked what they liked to do together, he said that each night they had “dinner theatre” at home, and that every night they ate in the kitchen while watching a show on a small TV. “That to me is one of the nicest parts of the day,” Lee said. “Of course we argue about what to watch. But we eventually work it out.”
In 1981, the couple relocated to Los Angeles, where Joan was a voice actress and wrote a novel, and the duo made cameo appearances in the Marvel films. (Joan last appeared in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse.) The couple were still married at the time of Joan’s death in July 2017, after she suffered from complications from a stroke. Lee’s death would follow a little over a year later on Nov. 12, 2018.
But their Hollywood love story is one for the books—owing in part to their independence from each other. When the PEOPLE reporter noted that Lee was on his way to work before Joan even woke up, she said wryly, “Why should I bother to get up to make him breakfast? He doesn’t bother to make it for me.”
Not that it seemed to bother Lee in the slightest, who, at the time was 56 and in perfect health, and said he loved spending time walking around New York to stay fit.
“You know,” he said, with a smile. “After 31 years, my wife still thinks I have a perfect body.”
