The Real Life Partners Of The Cast Of Chicago Fire

"Chicago Fire" is red hot right now. The show dishes up non-stop action, and the chemistry between the cast has viewers tuning in week after week to see what develops in the lives of their favorite characters. "Chicago Fire" follows a team of firefighters who work at the fictional Chicago Fire Department's Firehouse 51. The show is actually filmed in a real fire station on Chicago's Near West Side, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

The series is part of producer Dick Wolf's "One Chicago" franchise, which also includes "Chicago P.D." and "Chicago Med." "Chicago Fire" was the first show in the franchise and premiered in 2012. Of course, as it is with any long-running television drama, the personal lives of the characters provide as much — and sometimes even more — entertainment as the fire-fighting storylines. The show has had its share of real-life drama and heartbreak too, such as when Dushon Monique Brown, who played Connie, Chief Boden's assistant, died in 2018 at the age of 49. Some cast members have also left the show over the years, including Monica Raymund, Lauren German, and Charlie Barnett.

The real-life partners of the cast of "Chicago Fire" have had to put up with the crazy schedules of their spouses and partners throughout the show's nine seasons to date. Let's take a look at who those people are in the lives of current cast members David Eigenberg, Jesse Spencer, Taylor Kinney, Joe Minoso, and Kara Killmer.

David Eigenberg met his wife on an Army base

David Eigenberg plays Christopher Hermann on "Chicago Fire," but some viewers may also recognize him from "Sex and the City," where he played Miranda's husband, Steve. In real life, Eigenberg has been married to Chrysti Kotik since 2002. They met when "Sex and the City" was at its height of popularity — but she wasn't impressed. In fact, Kotik had never seen the show. They met in 2002 while Eigenberg was doing a meet-and-greet on the Army base where she was stationed. "I saw this woman with her little black beret, and she was just amazing," he said to Chicago's Splash in 2013.

Eigenberg got a friend to help him convince her to spend a day with him, and according to him, "we clicked." He proposed three months later. "There was just something about her," he said to the Chicago-based magazine. "Something you can't even really articulate. She's a good person and has got such a great heart." The couple has two kids: son Louis Steven, born in 2009, and daughter Myrna Belle, born in 2014.

Eigenberg and Kotik lived in Los Angeles when they first married and visited Chicago, where Kotik got a taste of the bitter Chicago winter and said, "I'll move anywhere with you for your job, but don't make me move back to Chicago." And then he got the job on "Chicago Fire."

Jesse Spencer's wife is a Ph.D. candidate

Jesse Spencer plays Matthew Casey on "Chicago Fire." But viewers may also recognize him from "House M.D." where he played Dr. Robert Chase from 2004 to 2012. The Australian actor met his now-wife, Kali Woodruff, at a music festival in Chicago in 2014, as reported by the Daily Mail. He proposed while they were spending a week in the Andes mountains in Peru in 2019.

The couple married on June 27, 2020, in the bride's hometown of Neptune Beach, Florida. The date was chosen to commemorate her grandparents' wedding anniversary. "Despite a spike in COVID, a venue change, a Saharan dust plume, not to mention a torrential thunderstorm, we made it across the line on our wedding day, and I'm a very lucky man," Spencer said to the Daily Telegraph.

Spencer wasn't exaggerating about his wife being smart, either! According to her Twitter bio, Woodruff is a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University, studying "auditory neuroscience and psychoacoustics." Spencer's filming in Chicago works out nicely for this couple!

Taylor Kinney was engaged to Lady Gaga

Taylor Kinney plays Kelly Severide on "Chicago Fire." He also played Mason Lockwood on "The Vampire Diaries." As for his personal life, he's best known for having been engaged to Lady Gaga. The actor and the superstar met in July 2011 in Nebraska on the shoot for her music video "Yoü and I." They fell hard for each other when he spontaneously kissed her during the video shoot.

They got engaged on Valentine's Day 2015 but broke up in July 2016. In October 2016, Gaga revealed on Howard Stern's Sirius XM show that she still cared for him. "I'm actually very close to Taylor," Gaga said to Stern at the time. "He's been my lover and my friend for a really long time."

That same month, Kinney reportedly dated a radiologist from Philadelphia named Alanna. In 2019, he was seen kissing an unidentified woman in Philadelphia.

Joe Minoso met his wife on the set of "Chicago Fire"

Joe Minoso plays Joe Cruz on "Chicago Fire." He actually met his wife, Caitlin Murphy Miles, on the set of the popular show. She's one of the makeup artists on "Chicago Fire." Minoso and Miles married on October 16, 2016, in a Chicago-themed wedding.

On a 2016 appearance on "Steve Harvey," he mentioned, "We wanted to give a little shoutout to Chicago, so we wanted to do like a 1920s kind of speakeasy thing." They even had a password for guests to enter the wedding. "All of the tables were named after speakeasies in Chicago from back in the day," he said.

Fellow cast member Marina Squerciati posted to Instagram, writing, "When friends marry friends." The "Chicago Fire" family is definitely on board with this picture-perfect love story!

Kara Killmer met Andrew Cheney on the set of "Beyond the Mask"

Kara Killmer plays Sylvie Brett on "Chicago Fire." She met her husband, actor Andrew Cheney, on the set of the 2015 movie "Beyond the Mask." They married on May 14, 2016, in Killmer's home state of Texas.

Meeting was fate for Killmer and Cheney, as she almost wasn't cast in the film. Casting had been underway for the role of Charlotte Holloway for a while by the time a friend told her about the film. She had worked with the casting director before, so she called and asked if she could audition.

Cheney also came to the project late in the process. Killmer had already done screen tests with other actors by the time Cheney signed onto the project, the couple shared in an interview. Whoever made the movie referral definitely deserved a shoutout at the couple's wedding!