Courteney Cox and Johnny McDaid Are Over - 13 Years, One Called-Off Engagement, and a Quiet Goodbye

Caption: Courteney Cox attends New York Fashion Week on February 17, 2009. Credit: Felicia C. Sullivan, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

Courteney Cox, 62, and Johnny McDaid, 49, have ended their relationship after more than 13 years together, People magazine confirmed on June 27. The split was described by sources as amicable. “They had a very deep relationship and they remain extremely amicable,” an insider told TMZ. “They are great friends and care about each other very much.”

The two had not been photographed together since September 2025, when they attended the U.S. Open in New York. Prior to that, they had been a relatively private couple for the final stretch of their relationship, with less public documentation of their time together than had been typical in earlier years. Multiple outlets noted that the split had apparently occurred sometime in late 2025, with the confirmation coming several months after the fact.

How It Started: Ed Sheeran, a Piano, and Sacha Baron Cohen

Cox met McDaid in 2013 at a party she hosted at her Malibu home. Ed Sheeran brought members of his band Snow Patrol - including McDaid - to the gathering. Cox later told Howard Stern the story in detail: she saw McDaid playing piano across the room, found him striking, and later asked a mutual friend to pass along her interest. Sacha Baron Cohen, also at the party, apparently made the introduction in characteristically direct fashion.

They went public with their relationship shortly after. In 2014, just nine months into dating, McDaid proposed. They were engaged for more than a year before Cox announced in late 2015 that they had called off the engagement. The reason given was that the relationship needed more time. They reconciled in 2016 and continued dating - but never re-engaged, a detail that became part of the low-key ambiguity that defined their relationship in later years.

A Relationship That Outlasted the Engagement

Cox has spoken in public interviews about the difficulty of maintaining a long-distance relationship between Los Angeles and London, where McDaid splits his time as a member of Snow Patrol. The logistics of the relationship - and of any relationship in the entertainment world - were something she addressed with relative candor in multiple interviews over the years.

In 2022, she told Howard Stern that McDaid had brought “balance” to her life and that she found his intensity and his music genuinely compelling. The relationship was described by people close to both of them as genuinely affectionate and unusually private for two people with significant public profiles.

Cox at 62: A Career and a Legacy That Don’t Require a Relationship to Be Complete

Cox’s public identity has always been anchored primarily in her work rather than her personal life. She played Monica Geller on Friends for ten seasons, a role that remains one of the most watched in the history of American television. She has continued acting, directing, and producing in the years since, including a return to the Scream franchise that extended her career into a new generation of horror audiences.

She received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023, with McDaid present on the red carpet for the ceremony. That image - the last major public documentation of their togetherness - now carries its own particular weight as a before-and-after marker for a relationship that ended quietly, without announcement, and apparently without significant drama.

What the Split Means and What It Doesn’t

Cox was previously married to David Arquette, her Scream co-star, from 1999 to 2013. They have a daughter together, Coco, who is now 22. Cox has spoken about the challenges of that marriage and its end with the same willingness to be candid that has characterized most of her public life.

The McDaid split does not come with a similar narrative of conflict. The story, as reported, is simply two people who were important to each other for a long time, living in different cities, on different schedules, who found that the relationship had run its natural course. For a public figure known to audiences primarily as Monica - one of the most enduringly popular characters in American comedy - the private reality of a relationship ending at 62, after 13 years, is both entirely ordinary and entirely its own thing.

References: E! Online | TMZ | Just Jared