Soap fans know Sean Kanan for his many years on General Hospital as AJ Quartermaine and now The Bold & The Beautiful on which he has played Deacon Sharpe for 25 years.
But off-screen, Sean has been married to his producer wife for almost 13 years, and together they've been raising a beautiful blended family. All you need to know here…
Early days
Sean married Michele Kanan in July 2012, and together they raised his daughter from a previous relationship and Michele's four children from a former marriage, including actress Juliet Vega.
© WireImageThe pair are now empty-nesters.
They met, however, when Sean was on a date with a friend of Michele's – and when Michele showed up, "I very quickly decided I was with the wrong girl," he told Swooon.
Sobriety
© Variety via Getty ImagesSean has credited Michele with helping him to get sober after "fairly catastrophic setbacks".
"She said to me at one point, 'I have put my heart and everything into this relationship. Please tell me that I didn't back the wrong horse,'" Sean once told People.
"I had been trying for a very long time to get sober, and I had intermittent periods of success followed by fairly catastrophic setbacks, let's say. But when I heard that, I don't know. The skies parted. It set something in motion that was different than everything before."
Career partners
As well as partners in marriage, the pair have worked together on the small screen and on books.
Sean has authored two self-help books – Way of the COBRA: Unleash Your Inner Badass and Welcome to the Kumite: Way of the COBRA – and in 2025 they released a book together, Way of the COBRA Couples, a relationship-based guide to building a winning partnership, personally and professionally.
"The chapter about navigating hardships and dealing with personal crises was tough because it required us to revisit some painful moments in our own relationship," the pair told Soap Opera Digest.
"It’s never easy to talk about the darker times, but we felt it was necessary to show that even the strongest couples aren’t immune to struggle. Those sections were the most emotionally draining but also the most rewarding to complete."
Who is Michele?
© Getty Images for Kash HoveyAccording to her Instagram bio, Michele is an Emmy award-winning television producer & writer director. She worked with Sean on the 2019 Emmy award-winning digital drama series Studio City, a semi-autobiographical love letter to soaps.
Michele produced the series, and her daughter, and Sean's step-daughter, Juliet Vega starred as the main character's surprise love child.
She has also worked with Jean-Claude van Damme on Darkness of Man.
What has Michele said about Sean?
"When we were producing Studio City, we were going through a lot. We’d become empty-nesters. We had moved. There was a lot going on," she told Swooon.
© Variety via Getty Images"In that time, we gave each other a lot of grace. We realized that we’re very good teammates with each other.
Blended family
Sean has one daughter, model Simoné Andrea, whom he welcomed from a past romance.
© FilmMagicMichele is mom to three daughters and one son. Juliet is an actress, and Anne-Sophie, a make-up and hair stylist who works with clients including Grammy-winning band Rawayana, while Gigi works in brand and creative, and is engaged to be married.
