To know Stephen King is to know Tabitha King, as hardly an interview or book goes by where the acclaimed horror writer doesn’t make mention of his wife or their marriage one way or another.
See, King may be known for his gruesome tales, terrifying imagination, and propensity for the supernatural, but in real life, the 75-year-old New England native is a softie at heart. Don’t believe me? Just read any of his more tender works such as 11/22/63, Elevation, or Bag of Bones (to name just a few). They all center around matters of the heart, and even when blood splatters or guts spew, it’s Cupid’s little arrow that punctures the heart of the story.
King’s famous first novel Carrie, published in 1974, is dedicated to Tabitha, or Tabby as we “constant readers” have come to know her. “This is for Tabby,” he writes. “Who got me into it — and then bailed me out of it.”
Followers of King’s work know that Tabitha is the reason Carrie was made, as has been stated numerous times by King, most prominently in his novel On Writing. King had thrown Carrie in the bin thinking it was rubbish, but it was Tabitha who fished it out, uncrumpled the pages, and told King he had something special on his hands. She helped him craft the female voice of Carrie, and the rest, as we know, is history.
Now with nearly 100 novels and novellas under his belt — his newest one being Holly — King is regarded as one of the most prolific, respected, and imaginative writers of our time. And much of his success, as he would be the first to admit, is owed to the support and love provided to him by Tabitha.
When did Stephen King and Tabitha King get married?
Stephen King was 27 years old and already had two kids (Naomi King and Joe Hill) when Carrie was published in 1974, which is pretty young no matter which way you spin it. He and Tabitha had already been married for several years, with Owen King, their third child, just a few years away.
Stephen and Tabitha officially tied the knot three years before Carrie’s publication, in 1971. They were fresh graduates of the University of Maine, where they met and fell in love in a poetry workshop. They’ve been married for over 52 years now. (With a minor divorce scare during the writing of 11/22/63 that only fellow creatives can understand).
Like King, Tabitha is a writer. She has penned eight novels, including Small World and The Book of Reuben, and over a dozen more short stories and poetry works. Much of her attention is focused on social activism nowadays. In fact, she’s known for biting back at people (and publications) for simply referring to her as “Stephen King’s wife,” which we fully acknowledge doing in this article, but with a bit more intention, if we may.
52 years of marriage is longer than some people get to live on this earth, sadly. Thankfully, if King’s undying professions of love for Tabitha are any indication, the married couple have not taken a single moment of it for granted, and if we’re lucky there’ll be many more dedications to Tabitha in future novels to come.