Who Is Aaron Paul's Wife? All About Lauren Parsekian

Aaron Paul and Lauren Parsekian have been married since 2013 and have two kids together.

Since meeting in 2010, they haven't been shy about sharing their love and affection for each other, whether that's through their sweet social media posts or Aaron affectionately calling Lauren his "pretty bird."

After a few years of dating, the Breaking Bad star and the director had a fairy tale engagement in Paris on New Year's Eve 2012. Aaron spoke to PEOPLE about the special moment, sharing that he popped the question on a stoop in the neighborhood of St. Germain.

"It's just this little courtyard outside of this hotel, and we were just dancing to Édith Piaf by ourselves on New Year's and then I begged her to marry me," he said in October 2012.

The pair got married in May 2013 at the Calamigos Ranch in Malibu, California. "It was beautiful and so emotional," Lauren told PEOPLE. "The first moment I saw Aaron will forever be the most perfect visual snapshot of my life."

They went on to welcome a daughter, Story Annabelle, in 2018 and a son, Ryden Caspian, in 2022.

Shortly after his son's birth, Aaron legally changed his last name from Sturtevant to Paul, his stage name, with Lauren and their two kids also changing their last names to Paul.

So, who is the director and activist married to Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul? Here's everything to know about Lauren Parsekian.

She's an activist

After going through some tough times as a kid, Lauren was inspired to do good and help others as much as possible. In 2009, she and her friend Molly Thompson, both students at Pepperdine University, launched the Kind Campaign, a nonprofit organization that aims to end girl-on-girl bullying.

Lauren and Thompson toured around the country to speak to high school students and spread their message of kindness and compassion. According to its website, the Kind Campaign organizes hundreds of assemblies at schools each year and provides schools with tools to start their own Kind Clubs.

Speaking to PEOPLE about the Kind Campaign in 2014, Thompson said: "[Bullying] is such a universal issue. The emotional experience that females go through is the same no matter where you live. Our goal is to start a conversation in schools and let girls realize that we all play a role. Simply by being conscious of the things we say and do, we really can create change."

She was bullied as a child

One of the things that inspired Lauren to start Kind Campaign was her own experience with childhood bullying. In 2014, she told PEOPLE that she was "put through the wringer," saying that bullying left her with "severe depression and an eating disorder."

"These girls did whatever they could to make me feel alone and ugly and worthless," she said. "I completely lost myself. My grades dropped and I lost all my self-confidence."

Lauren opened up about her experience with bullying again in 2018 during an interview with The Good Trade, recalling that her bullies threw things at her at lunch, ripped up her homework before class and stole things out of her locker. "This group of girls did whatever they could possibly do to make me feel alone and ugly and worthless," she said.

She's a director

Lauren and Thompson first met at Pepperdine University, where they were both film majors. Everything they studied came in handy when they decided they wanted to make Finding Kind.

"We just sat down and considered what we would have liked to hear when we were in school," Lauren told The Good Trade. "We asked ourselves what would have been impactful when we were 12-year-olds … and hammered out original activities and curriculum. We were trying to create a program that would create lasting impact."

In 2009, Lauren and Thompson began filming the documentary Finding Kind, which helped kick off the Kind Campaign. The two went on a 10,000-mile cross-country trip, during which they interviewed hundreds of girls and women in the U.S. about girl-on-girl bullying.

The documentary is centered on the pressures of being a girl and how these pressures affect girls' relationships and friendships. In the film, Lauren and Thompson also talk with experts in psychology, relationships and education.

She met Aaron at Coachella

Aaron and Lauren met in 2010 at Coachella, but they kept their relationship platonic at first. After establishing a friendship, the two reconnected at the California music festival the following year and "fell in love."

"We’d met at Coachella, became friends,” Aaron told PEOPLE in July 2012. “And then a year later, we fell in love at Coachella. We ran off together at Coachella. You know, first kiss on the Ferris wheel sort of thing.”

He added that, at the time, they knew something real was happening between them. "You know when people say, 'When you know, you know?' It was crazy," he said. "The moment that happened — even leading up to the kiss on the Ferris wheel, I couldn't imagine myself being without her … I was like, 'Wait, can this actually exist?' "

They got engaged not long after, on New Year's Eve in 2012. Aaron later told PEOPLE: "I'm the luckiest man on the planet. It doesn't make sense to me. The way she looks at me … she has that magical glow about her."

She and Aaron almost eloped

The couple had intense feelings for each other early on — so much so that they nearly eloped. In a 2014 interview with Elle, Aaron said that their first date after Coachella was a trip to Las Vegas.

"We also jumped into a cab and said, 'Take us to the nearest chapel. We're getting married,' " he said. "The Little White Chapel ended up being closed. We probably would have gone through with it. It would have been a pretty funny story. But I'm happy we got married when we did — a year later."

She and Aaron got married in 2013

A year after their near-elopement, Aaron and Lauren got married on May 27, 2013, at the Calamigos Ranch in Malibu, California.

The ceremony was held in front of 250 guests, including Aaron's Breaking Bad costar Bryan Cranston, and the bride wore an Amsale gown. As an ode to their Paris engagement, the couple held a 1920s Parisian carnival-themed reception.

Over the years, Aaron and Lauren have shared sweet tributes to one another to mark their wedding anniversary.

On their eighth anniversary, Lauren shared a series of photos of them from throughout the years, writing in the caption: "I truly love you more this second than I ever have."

She continued, "For things like the fact that you subconsciously have a hair rubber band around your wrist at all times now. Just in case [Story, their daughter] needs it … There have been beautiful, hard, thrilling, sad, mundane, peaceful, new chapters and everything in between and there's no one I'd rather live it ALL with."

Aaron marked their tenth anniversary a day late in May 2023, sharing a black-and-white photo from their wedding day.

"You are such a light to this world @laurenpaul8. We are spoiled by your love and kindness constantly. Thank you for showing our own beautiful family (and complete strangers) what it’s like to be a decent human and to always think of others before ones self," he wrote in the caption.

She's a mom

Aaron and Lauren are parents of two. In September 2017, Lauren announced she was pregnant with their first baby. She gave birth to their daughter, Story Annabelle, in February 2018.

"There are no words that will ever be able to explain what just happened to my heart," Lauren wrote on Instagram of Story's birth.

In May 2018, Lauren celebrated her first Mother's Day, sharing a heartfelt post on Instagram about her motherhood journey.

"No one could have prepared me for the magic I now get to experience on a daily basis," she wrote, addressing her then-3-month-old daughter. "Magic: it's the word I use most often when I describe you and what it's like to be your mama."

She continued: "I smell the top of your head and feel glitter down my spine. I take your tiny fingers and brush them across my cheek. You have my attention, my love."

During an April 2022 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Aaron announced that Lauren had given birth to their second baby, a son named Ryden Caspian. He also shared that Cranston was the godfather.

It appears Story has adapted to her role as a big sister as well: "[She] can't squeeze him enough. Like, lays on top of him, suffocates him," Aaron added. "[He]'s her doll."

She loves spending time in nature

A quick glance through Lauren's Instagram page shows that she loves to spend time outside. She often posts photos outdoors and writes about how much she enjoys escaping to nature.

In one photo of a bamboo forest, she quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson in her caption, sharing, "The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship."

In another post from 2020, she shared that they had started riding e-bikes as a family. "Spending time in nature has been the most important and healing thing for me this year," she wrote. "These bikes literally changed our lives."

Lauren also opened up about a life-changing experience she had hiking to Machu Picchu in a 2017 interview with USA Today.

"We ended up hiking from dark in the morning until nighttime, every single day for five days," she said. "We were trekking through jungles, through snow, through little villages. It was just such a unique experience, and we all bonded in such a cool way. It was an incredible, spiritual experience that I'll hold with me my whole life."

She's not afraid to speak up about important issues

As an activist, Lauren is dedicated to speaking up about important social issues and using her platform to do so.

In May 2022, she wrote an impassioned Instagram post about gun control after 19 fourth-grade students and two teachers were killed in the Robb Elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

"I knew we were doomed when NOTHING changed after Sandy Hook," Lauren wrote. "And here we are again … We ALL need to come together, gun owners and not, and demand reasonable gun law reform at the VERY LEAST. If we can't come together and agree on this, well then I'm afraid our country has lost its soul."

The following month, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, Lauren posted two maps of the U.S., inviting her followers to consider the correlation between abortion access and comprehensive sex education. "Look at the trend between the states that immediately banned abortion and their stance on sex ed," she wrote. "Let that sink in."

She's really close to her mom

Lauren has a close relationship with her mom, Debra, who joined her while she was filming Finding Kind. In a 2014 interview with Elle, Lauren said: "My mom and I made that transition from mother-daughter to friends. My co-founder Molly and I shot the film right after college and we brought both of our moms on the road with us. I did a two-month-long road trip in a minivan with my mom when I had just turned 22. Ever since then, she's been more of a friend than a mom."

In her interview with USA Today, Lauren cited her parents as two of her biggest inspirations.

"Growing up, they really encouraged me to go after whatever I was passionate about," she said. "They really encouraged that in all of their kids — not only encouraging us professionally and creatively, but [they] also really brought us up to be open-minded and open-hearted to anyone and everyone."

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