Marriage
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50 free Marriage trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Marriage is one of the oldest institutions people have, and one of the strangest. It has ended reigns, redrawn borders, filled courtrooms and inspired some of the most loved novels, films and sitcoms ever made. This quiz covers the whole subject: celebrity couples and very short Hollywood unions, kings and queens who wed for power or gave up power to wed, the court cases and laws that changed who could marry, and customs from around the world that range from touching to bizarre. There are famous husbands and wives from literature and television too. It is written for a crowd: an anniversary party, a couples' night, an engagement get-together, or any quiz night that needs a round on married life. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so there is a story to share after each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1967 US Supreme Court case, named for the couple who brought it, ended state bans on interracial marriage?
Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia began when police found the Lovings asleep at home. Mildred Loving pointed to the marriage certificate on the bedroom wall, but the couple were charged anyway.
Q 02Which country hosts the Wife Carrying World Championships, where the winner's prize is the wife's weight in beer?
Finland
Finland has staged the race in the town of Sonkajärvi since 1992. Men haul their partners over a 253.5-metre obstacle course, and a heavier wife means more beer.
Q 03What did William Shakespeare's will famously leave to his wife, Anne Hathaway, in a line squeezed in late?
His second-best bed
His second-best bed was written in between the lines of the will. Most of the estate went to his daughter Susanna and her husband, and scholars still argue over what the bequest meant.
Q 04Which Welsh actor did Elizabeth Taylor marry twice, in 1964 and again in 1975?
Richard Burton
Richard Burton was her co-star in Cleopatra before he was her husband. She married eight times to seven men; the pair divorced in 1974 and remarried the following year.
Q 05Which naturalist listed the pros and cons of marrying on scrap paper before proposing to his cousin Emma Wedgwood?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin headed his two columns Marry and Not Marry. A constant companion, he noted, would be better than a dog anyhow; the price was less money for books.
Q 06Which pop star's 2004 marriage to childhood friend Jason Alexander lasted just 55 hours?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears wed him at a Las Vegas chapel in January 2004. A court undid the marriage after a petition said she had lacked understanding of her actions.
Q 07Which future First Lady set her 1905 wedding date to suit her uncle, the sitting US president?
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin, her fifth cousin once removed, so her surname never changed. Her uncle Theodore was due in New York that day, which settled the date.
Q 08Which US president, Abraham Lincoln's immediate predecessor, is the only one who never married?
James Buchanan
James Buchanan stayed a bachelor all his life, so his orphaned niece Harriet Lane served as White House hostess during his term.
Q 09In which British territory did John Lennon marry Yoko Ono in 1969, days before their Amsterdam bed-in?
Gibraltar
Gibraltar hosted the ceremony on 20 March 1969. The couple then spent their honeymoon in bed at the Amsterdam Hilton, inviting the world's press in every day.
Q 10Which 1987 film casts Peter Cook as the Impressive Clergyman at the rushed ceremony for Buttercup and Humperdinck?
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride has Humperdinck impatiently hurry the ceremony along before sending Buttercup to her chambers. Cook made his name as half of a comedy double act with Dudley Moore.
Q 11Which New York Yankees legend was married to Marilyn Monroe for just nine months in 1954?
Joe DiMaggio
Joe DiMaggio stayed devoted long after the split. When Monroe died he had half a dozen red roses delivered to her crypt three times a week for 20 years.
Q 12Which country singer proposed to June Carter on stage during a 1968 concert in London, Ontario?
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash asked her mid-show, 13 years after the two first met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. They married the following week in Kentucky.
Q 13Which twice-divorced American did Edward VIII give up the British throne to marry?
Wallis Simpson
Q 21In Friends, whose name does Ross say by mistake instead of Emily's during his London wedding vows?
Rachel
Rachel is in the room when he says it, and the camera settles on her shocked face. The season ends there, with the registrar asking Emily whether he should carry on.
Q 22Whose 1955 hit Love and Marriage later became the theme song of the sitcom Married... with Children?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra introduced the song in a 1955 television production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. His single reached number five on the Billboard chart.
Q 23Which North American tourist spot has long marketed itself as the honeymoon capital of the world?
Niagara Falls
Wallis Simpson became Duchess of Windsor when they wed six months after the abdication, but she was never allowed to share her husband's style of Royal Highness.
Q 14Which US state was admitted to the Union in 1896 only after agreeing to outlaw polygamy?
Utah
Utah had been kept waiting by long disputes between its dominant Mormon community and Congress. The ban had to be written into the new state constitution.
Q 15Which biblical king of Israel is said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines?
Solomon
Solomon paid for it, in the Bible's telling: his foreign wives turned his heart after other gods, and the kingdom was divided after his death as punishment.
Q 16Which Greek goddess of marriage spends much of her mythology punishing the lovers of her husband Zeus?
Hera
Hera was also worshipped as the protector of women in childbirth, yet the myths dwell on her jealous revenge against Zeus's many lovers and their children.
Q 17Which novel about the five Bennet sisters opens with a famous line on rich single men needing wives?
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice makes marriage its central idea from that first sentence. The irony is that in Austen's society it was single women without a fortune who needed the match.
Q 18In which Victorian novel is a wedding halted by news that the groom, Mr Rochester, already has a wife?
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre has a lawyer stop the ceremony to reveal that Rochester married Bertha Mason years before. He keeps her locked away on the top floor of Thornfield Hall.
Q 19Which character in a Dickens novel, jilted on her wedding day, wears her wedding dress for the rest of her life?
Miss Havisham
Miss Havisham also wears only one shoe and leaves the wedding cake uneaten on the table, shut away in her decaying mansion, Satis House.
Q 20Which Cuban-born bandleader played Ricky Ricardo opposite his real-life wife Lucille Ball in a 1950s sitcom?
Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz married Ball in 1940, and together they founded Desilu Productions, the company that made the sitcom. It outlasted the marriage, which ended in divorce.
Niagara Falls recorded its first honeymooners in 1801: Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr, and her husband Joseph. Railroads later advertised the trip to couples.
Q 24Which tennis champion married Andre Agassi in 2001 with only the couple's mothers as witnesses?
Steffi Graf
Steffi Graf started dating Agassi after the 1999 French Open, and the wedding two years later was held quietly at their home in Las Vegas.
Q 25Which church founder entered the record books in 1988 by marrying 6,516 identically dressed couples at once?
Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon picked many of the partners himself, sometimes from photographs. His Unification Church had already wed more than 2,000 couples at Madison Square Garden in 1982.
Q 26Which carved wooden gift did Welsh suitors traditionally give a young woman as a sign of romantic intent?
A spoon
A spoon, known as a lovespoon, was meant to prove to her father that the suitor could work wood and provide for a family. The earliest dated one in Wales is from 1667.
Q 27Which musical features Yente the matchmaker arranging marriages in the Russian village of Anatevka?
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof has eldest daughter Tzeitel reject Yente's match with a wealthy older butcher so that she can marry Motel, the poor tailor she grew up with.
Q 28Which last wife of Henry VIII outlived the king and went on to marry a fourth husband?
Catherine Parr
Catherine Parr wed Thomas Seymour about six months after Henry died. With four husbands in all, she is the most-married English queen.
Q 29Which legal ruling, sought by Henry VIII from the Pope in 1527, treats a marriage as if it never took place?
An annulment
An annulment is usually retroactive, unlike a divorce, which ends a valid marriage. When Pope Clement VII would not grant one, Henry made himself Supreme Head of the Church of England.
Q 30Which empress did Napoleon part from in 1810 because she had not given him an heir?
Joséphine
Joséphine agreed to end the marriage so that the emperor could remarry in the hope of a son. She retired to the Château de Malmaison, noted for the rose garden she supervised.