Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka are now the dads of two 16-year-olds, and anyone who remembers their baby announcement may need a moment to recover.
Harper Grace and Gideon Scott were born on October 12, 2010, making October 12, 2026 their sweet-sixteen milestone.
Yes, sixteen, which feels like an unreasonable number of years for the universe to have slipped past us.
The birth was reported by UPI in 2010, when Harris announced that he and his longtime partner had welcomed a boy and a girl.
Today’s milestone offers a lovely reason to look back at the family the two men have built together.
A love story that became a family
As Us Weekly’s relationship timeline documents, Harris and Burtka began dating in April 2004.
They became parents in 2010 and married in Italy in September 2014.
That means this birthday comes after more than 22 years together and 12 years of marriage.
Burtka is an actor and trained chef, with a creative career of his own alongside his husband’s work in television and theater.
For readers who know Harris through How I Met Your Mother, the birthday is a reminder that his offscreen family has been growing up throughout all those years of reruns.
Celebrity time, it turns out, moves at exactly the same alarming speed as everyone else’s.
The dad jokes were already ready
The couple’s earlier birthday messages offer a glimpse of how they have spoken publicly about parenting.
When the twins turned 12 in 2022, Harris described fatherhood as demanding and deeply rewarding, according to Good Morning America’s coverage of his tribute.
He also expressed gratitude for the love his children had brought into his life.
A year later, his message for their thirteenth birthday combined affection with a thoroughly recognizable parental joke about the teenage years.
“I promise I’ll be with you through all of it,” he wrote in the 2023 tribute, reported by GMA.
Burtka also shared his pride in the people the twins were becoming.
Those were earlier birthday messages, but their warmth feels right at home alongside this new milestone.
For some gay readers, the moving part is simply seeing a family continue to grow through ordinary chapters of life.
Not every meaningful moment needs a grand announcement; sometimes the birthday itself says plenty.
Happy sixteenth birthday, Harper and Gideon, and here’s to the next chapter.
If this milestone leaves you thinking about other families with LGBTQ+ parents, Family Equality’s collection of family stories offers a warm place to keep reading, with voices beyond the celebrity spotlight.
📷 @nph @dbelicious