While Grey’s Anatomy is a medical drama on the surface, fans know that it’s the drama between the employees at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital that keep viewers coming back 18 seasons after its premiere in 2005. Over those seasons, there have been more couples than disasters, and we all know that Grey’s has no shortage of the latter.
The couples on the show range from the instantly iconic to the forced and baffling, but we’re here today to talk about the best of the best. No pairing here is perfect, but these couples are all considered great loves.
9. Adele and Richard
Adele (Loretta Devine) stood by Richard (James Pickens Jr.) through a lot; namely, his long-running affair with Ellis Grey (Kate Burton). Though Richard and Ellis had a passionate affair, they were too volatile to make something work long-term. Adele understood this, and stuck around through all the hurt Richard put her through. The two remained a solid couple, though there was always the pain of his affair lingering between them.
In their later years, Adele began to tire of constantly being second to Richard’s work. Her seemingly endless patience finally began to run thin, and she gave Richard an ultimatum that he ignored, leading her to finally leave the marriage. Richard realized his mistake and tried to get Adele back, coming to her aid when she’s injured in a car accident. The two suffer a miscarriage, and Richard’s unwavering support of his wife stops her from going through with their divorce.
Sadly, Adele began to develop Alzheimer’s, and mentally drifted further and further away from Richard. He continued to take care of her until her death, one of the saddest on the show. The marriage between Richard and Adele was far from perfect, but it was a bittersweet example of two people choosing each other again and again.
8. Alex and Jo
Alex (Justin Chambers) and Jo (Camilla Luddington) didn’t exactly hit it off right away when they met. He was interested in her, but she didn’t return that interest. They had a bit of an antagonistic relationship, but started to bond over their traumatic pasts. After Jo got out of a past abusive relationship, she and Alex started seeing each other romantically. Things were a bit rocky, but they stuck together through Alex’s issues with his father. Alex seemed quite sure that Jo was the one for him, which marked the first time he’d felt that way about anyone since Izzie (Katherine Heigl).
Alex eventually proposed to Jo, who seemed hesitant of such a commitment after her history with an abusive husband. When a misunderstanding led Alex to believe that DeLuca (Giacomo Gianotti) was trying to sexually assault Jo, Alex brutally beat DeLuca. This frightened Jo, and she ended their relationship, but they eventually got back together and got engaged and then married (twice).
But then came a rather rude ending to their story. When it came time for Chambers to leave the show, the writers had Alex reconnect with Izzie offscreen, where he discovered that she’d had twins from back when they were together. Alex decided to stay with Izzie, and sent Jo divorce papers. The ending of their long-standing relationship upset fans, mostly because of how cruel it seemed that Alex was being to Jo for leaving her so suddenly and ending their marriage via a letter.
7. April and Jackson
April (Sarah Drew) and Jackson (Jesse Williams) were one of the more unexpected couples on the show, but nonetheless became one of the more popular ones with fans. April was a virgin when they met, and she broke her vow of celibacy to start hooking up with Jackson. It was more than just sex between them, though it took them both a long time to admit this. They started seeing other people, and April got engaged to Matthew (Justin Breuning). Jackson ended up pulling a “speak now” and April left her fiancé at the altar to run off with Jackson, and they got married.
April got pregnant with their child, but he was diagnosed with a disease that forced them to induce labor very early on. Their son died in childbirth, and April and Jackson were devastated. April dealt with her grief by leaving to go on tour overseas as a military medic with Owen (Kevin McKidd), and Jackson asked for a divorce after being fed up with feeling abandoned.
Unbeknownst to Jackson, April was pregnant when they signed the divorce papers. It was clear that they still had feelings for each other, but they stayed separated for a long time, each moving on to other serious relationships. However, in typical Grey’s fashion, they found their way back to each other before leaving Grey Sloan Memorial.
6. Denny and Izzie
Denny (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) was Izzie’s first great love. He was a patient waiting for a heart transplant, and the two began to bond as Izzie was assigned to take care of him. The two clearly had feelings for each other, but their situation as doctor and patient complicated things. Because of their personal relationship, Izzie became very invested in the choices Denny was making regarding his health.
Izzie’s love for Denny gave way to desperation to do whatever she could to save him. She cut his LVAD wire so he would be moved up the transplant list, knowing that he wouldn’t live long enough to receive the heart he needed if she didn’t do something. Denny proposed to Izzie, and she accepted. For a minute, it looked like Denny might get well, and that the two could actually have a happy life together. But this is Grey’s, after all, so it was only a matter of time before tragedy struck for the couple.
Despite receiving the transplant, Denny’s health took a turn for the worse, and he died suddenly in his sleep. Izzie finding his body was one of the all-time saddest moments on Grey’s, which fans of the show will know is really saying something. Denny left his fortune to Izzie, who put it towards the building of a health clinic.
5. Arizona and Callie
Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) were, for a long time, one of the most beloved couples on Grey’s Anatomy. The attraction between the two was immediate, and fans began to root for them almost as instantly. They entered into a relationship and things got increasingly serious, but they broke up when Callie discovered that Arizona didn’t want kids. When the hospital was subject to a shooting, they reevaluated their relationship, and Arizona decided that she did want to start a family with Callie.
The two broke up again when Arizona left for a work opportunity. When she came back, Callie was pregnant with Mark’s kid after they’d had a casual relationship in Arizona’s absence. Arizona showed how committed she was to Callie by agreeing to raise the child with her. The two got married, but not until after the most dramatic proposal of all time: the question was posed prior to a major car accident, after which the answer was yes.
Things got complicated between the two when Callie had to amputate Arizona’s leg after the plane crash (these two have been through a lot), and Arizona couldn’t help but resent her for it. Arizona ended up cheating on Callie, and this caused problems that they felt they couldn’t get past, so they got a divorce. Arizona moved across the country with their daughter, and Callie moved on with someone else. Their breakup was one of the sadder ones the show has seen, but many fans were glad when Ramirez’s departure from the show led the writers to write her exit as being caused by her moving to be with Arizona and their daughter again.
4. Bailey and Ben
Ben (Jason Winston) was the first guy Bailey (Chandra Wilson) dated seriously after her difficult divorce. They broke up when she realized that she needed some time to herself after everything she’d been through, and she began to casually see someone else. Ben waited for Bailey to be ready, and then came back to fight for her.
The two picked back up quite easily, and seemed like a great match. They got married, and became one of the most stable couples on the show. They struggled when Ben went back to school and had to spend a lot of time away from home, but their marriage proved stronger than many others on the show, and they stuck it out.
3. Alex and Izzie
When Alex and Izzie first met, their reactions were pretty much limited to him harassing and ridiculing her. Their antagonistic relationship eventually became a friendship as the residents became a team. Alex was always interested in Izzie, and they started going out not long before Izzie met Denny.
Alex started to stress when he was having performance issues in bed with Izzie, so he solved his problems by sleeping with Nurse Olivia (Sarah Utterback). Izzie dumped him as soon as she found out. They eventually got back together, and got married when Izzie found out that she had developed a brain tumor.
When Heigl was written off the show, Izzie left Alex in a move that broke fans' hearts. She sent him divorce papers, and the days of Alex and Izzie were over for a long time. That is, of course, until Chambers left the show, and the writers had him go live on a farm with Izzie and their children, giving them the happily ever after they deserved, albeit at the expense of his relationship with Jo.
2. Derek and Meredith
Grey’s Anatomy begins with Meredith hooking up with Derek (Patrick Dempsey), only to find out that he’s one of her superiors at the hospital she just started working at. Despite the complications, they started seeing each other, but things hit a snag when Derek’s wife Addison (Kate Walsh) showed up. They were separated, but Meredith felt betrayed that Derek hadn’t told her he was married.
Derek gave his marriage another shot, but never stopped loving Meredith. When his marriage was officially over, he and Meredith got together, albeit not without dealing with Meredith’s commitment issues. They got through it all, their relationship remaining the heart of the show (romantically, anyway), and got married via post-it notes. They eventually adopted Zola, a little girl Derek was treating. Their family continued to expand, and they were stable by Grey’s standards.
Eventually, Derek was offered a job that took him away from Seattle. When the distance got too hard, Derek quit his job and returned to Grey Sloan. The couple got to be happy again for a brief time, until Dempsey was written off the show in a way that was downright cruel: he was hit by a car and succumbed to his injuries in the hospital, leaving a pregnant Meredith to raise their kids alone. We’re still not over it!
1. Lexie and Mark
Lexie (Chyler Leigh) followed in her older sister’s footsteps by pursuing a forbidden workplace romance with Mark (Eric Dane). Like Derek and Meredith before them, the two started seeing each other in secret before getting serious and making things public. There were difficulties that arose due to their age gap, as Mark was in a place where he was more ready for marriage and Lexie wasn’t yet.
Despite their challenges, they stuck by each other, until Mark’s daughter showed up pregnant, and he invited her to move in with him. Lexie was, understandably, not ready to be a grandmother before she was 30, so they broke up and started seeing other people. Just as it looked like they were going to give things another try, they found out that Callie was pregnant with Mark’s baby. They pretty much continue to pine over each other until the show's fateful plane crash in Season 8, when Lexie is crushed and spends her last minutes holding hands with Mark, who promises her that they’ll be together. He dies not long after.