Portia de Rossi Surprises Wife Ellen DeGeneres With Poker Lessons for Her 62nd Birthday
Before Ellen DeGeneres presented at the 2020 Grammys, she was at home celebrating her 62nd birthday with wife Portia de Rossi. Instead of throwing the comedian a huge party like she did for her 60th birthday, Portia, 46, decided to keep things a little bit more low-key this year with one special surprise.
“Happy Birthday to my wife! I surprised her with a poker coaching session with none other than WPT’s Vince Van Patten! Thanks, Vince!” she penned the caption alongside a video.
As some of you know, Vince is famous for the great commentary he gives on the World Poker Tour. And even though he’s probably explained the game to hundreds of people, he wasn’t ready for the hilarious exchange he got with Ellen.
“Usually when a person acts strong, they’re weak and when they act weak, they’re strong,” he explained to the talk show host. “So some players will go — and they try to table talk me back into the hand.”
However, Ellen made sure Vince knew she wasn’t no table-talking gal. “I’m not table talking you, I’m just talking and you’re at a table,” she jokingly said while Portia and a few other people laughed in the background.
Since Ellen and Portia got married in 2008, they have been doing a bunch of sweet things for each other. While previously appearing on David Letterman’s Netflix series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the Finding Nemo star revealed a great thing Portia did for her when she was about to go on tour.
“We’ve been together for 15 years and she had never seen me do stand-up, because I hadn’t done stand up in 15 years so when I made the deal, she was like, ‘Why are you adding this to your plate? You have so much going on, this is just going to be stressful,’” Ellen explained in May 2019.
“But then when she saw me do stand-up, she just loved it and she went to every single performance and gave me notes,” she continued. “It was great because then she’d tell me if I did something one night a little bit better or, if I missed, [she’d say] ‘You forgot to do this!’ She got way into it. She wants me to go on tour.” Aww!
The compliments didn’t stop there. Ellen said she loves being around Portia because she makes her laugh. “She’s fantastic, she’s very, very funny,” Ellen gushed. “She makes me laugh, which is really important.”
