Tom Selleck first met Jillie Mack while she was performing in Cats in 1983 Tom Selleck has been married to his wife, Jillie Mack, for nearly four decades.
Before he was Frank Reagan on Blue Bloods, Selleck was the titular character on the ’80s TV series Magnum, P.I. The hit show was the launching pad for Selleck’s career, but it also led him to temporarily leave the entertainment industry.
Selleck met Mack at the height of his fame while she was performing in the musical Cats. The pair married in 1987, and soon after, he quit Magnum, P.I. so they could start a family together and live a quieter life on a ranch in Ventura, California.
“I’m a fairly private person,” the actor later told PEOPLE in 2020. “And I’ve always treasured the balance between work and time with my family. It’s always about them.”
He eventually returned to acting, but his focus has always been on Mack and his children.
So, who is Tom Selleck’s wife? Here’s everything to know about Jillie Mack and her decades-long relationship with the actor.
She played Rumpleteazer in Cats in the early ’80s Mack spent her mid-20s starring in the West End musical Cats as Rumpleteazer. The musical wasn’t just an impressive milestone on Mack’s résumé; it also brought her to Selleck.
In 1983, Selleck was in London filming Lassiter and spent his afternoons seeing Cats — an after-work activity his costar Jane Seymour found odd. “He kept telling me how great Cats was,” Seymour told PEOPLE in 1984. “I thought it was good, but I couldn’t see going back a dozen times.”
Mack’s agent told PEOPLE, “They had dinner one night and it went on from there.” When her contract with the musical was up, Mack moved to the U.S. to continue her relationship with the actor.
She and Selleck planned their 1987 wedding under fake names On Aug. July 1987, the couple tied the knot at a Victorian-style, open-all-hours wedding chapel near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Only a handful of family members were present at the couple’s secret wedding, including Selleck’s brother, Bob, who arranged everything with fake names in hopes of throwing off the public and the media. Even the minister left in the dark; they were expecting a “Tom Jenkins” and a “Suzie Mark.”
A local Nevada paper ran a story about the celebrity couple’s nuptials a month later, alerting the world of their private ceremony.
“They were both nervous, like any other couple about to get married,” the chapel’s pastor recalled of Selleck and Mack’s big day. “He was very concerned that the service be heartfelt, very concerned for her that the service be meaningful. He is a very warm, caring man.”
Prior to his marriage with Mack, Selleck was married to actress Jacqueline Ray for 11 years; the pair finalized their divorce in 1982. Their top priorities are privacy and family Even before Selleck and Mack settled down together, the Blue Bloods actor set boundaries between his public and personal life.
“I’ve found it very difficult to expose my private life and live with it,” Selleck told PEOPLE in 1984. At the time, he and Mack were living in Hawaii, where he was filming Magnum, P.I. “There are certain things I’m just not comfortable with,” he added on sharing too much of his personal life.
Speaking to PEOPLE in 2012, Selleck said that quitting Magnum, P.I. to focus on his family was one of the best decisions he had ever made. Back then, the actor regularly worked 90-hour weeks and spent his breaks filming movies. “It took a long time to get off the train,” he said.
Selleck continued, “My first priority is time with my family,” adding it had been imperative to “nurture” his marriage with Mack. “I think wanting time away from work has been good for that.”
