:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2)/Rob-Lowe-and-Sheryl-Berkoff-081324-6a5976248a3748dca8d3c9a252b1928e.jpg "Rob Lowe recalls stress-free wedding with wife Sheryl Berkoff (exclusive)")
There are weddings that are big and lavish, with many guests and characterized by pomp and splendor.
And then there’s Rob Lowe’s wedding.
When Lowe, then 28 and recently sober, married Sheryl Berkoff on July 22, 1991, the loving couple opted for an intimate ceremony at the home of a mutual friend.
Gonzalo Marroquin/Getty
“The great thing about it was that we didn’t have to go to a lot of trouble to find a location for it or come up with anything,” Lowe, 60, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story, which celebrates the most defining moments in the Hollywood icon’s life.
“It was very quiet. Nobody knew they were coming to a wedding. We didn’t want the word to get out. It was just for us.”
He adds: “I only have great memories. There was no stress about it.”
Lowe admits that 63-year-old Sheryl did most of the planning and put together the perfect experience within just a month of his proposal.
Courtesy of Rob Lowe
“I proposed to her and by the time the evening was over, she had agreed to a wedding date a month later!” he says of Sheryl, who was his makeup artist in the 1990 thriller. Bad influence. “Sheryl Lowe is a closer! It was the best wedding and an incredible day: I was sober, in love, and building a brand new life for myself. I actively pursued this path and definitely felt great doing it.”
The couple, who danced their first wedding dance to the “Love Theme” by Beyond Africasoon started a family and raised their sons Matthew, now 30, and John Owen, 28.
Sheryl Lowe/Instagram
Lowe says he envisioned a future with Sheryl years before they got married.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few ‘aha’ moments, as they say. Actually, it goes much further than that: they are profound, life-changing, instinctive, crystal-clear, certain experiences of God, and one of them was when Sheryl and I were on vacation in Fiji as boyfriend and girlfriend,” he says.
Jenny Gage + Tom Betteron
“They had put a little plaque on the cabin we were living in that said ‘Rob and Sheryl.’ I was overwhelmed with visions of the future, of us being together and having children.”
Lowe has kept the little sign all these years later as a memento of that momentous moment.
He says: “I realized that if it didn’t work out for her, it wouldn’t work out for anyone else.”
To read more of Rob Lowe’s exclusive PEOPLE interview, pick up a copy of the new issue on newsstands Friday.
