Riki Lindhome Married Fred Armisen 2 Years Ago — and She Welcomed a Son Weeks After Their First Date (Exclusive)

Lindhome shares her journey exclusively with PEOPLE after she welcomed a baby via surrogate and married Armisen in 2022

Two years ago on June 1, Wednesday actress Riki Lindhome and Saturday Night alum Fred Armisen secretly tied the knot.

The couple had known each other for 15 years, but it wasn’t until they started filming Wednesday together in 2020 in Romania that something changed. Each time Lindhome thought about it, her heart overruled her brain. “I could tell I was having feelings, but then I was like, ‘Well, I can’t say anything because I’m about to have a baby,” Lindome, 45, says exclusively to PEOPLE at her studio in Los Angeles.

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After several years of failed IVF treatments and her plans to adopt fell through, Lindhome decided to have a child via surrogacy and a donated sperm and egg. She welcomed her son Keaton on March 1, 2022, while dating Armisen, 57, who was still filming abroad. Ultimately, she didn’t know if this was something he wanted for their future together.

“He didn't get to meet Keaton until three weeks after he was born because he was still working. And I said, ‘All I want is the truth. If you feel in your gut that's not for you, it doesn't make you a jerk. I'm not mad at you,” she told him. “I said, ‘I still think you're the best. I just want you to really feel what you feel. And then be honest about it because it's a big life-altering thing.’ And he said, ‘Okay, okay.’”

Lindhome didn’t want to pressure her boyfriend. After all, they had only been dating a few weeks. “I told him, ‘So you just tell me what your heart says, and he said ‘Yes.’ It was just insta-family, basically,” she says, laughing.

While the two worked together on set for two months, Lindhome wanted to tell Armisen how she felt. “I knew that I was starting to have feelings for him, and I wanted to go on a date. That's what I knew. So I was like, 'Okay, let's explore,' she remembers. “Then it unfolded naturally over time. I wasn't like, ‘You're the dad.’ I was like, ‘I want to have dinner with you.’ My thought was, ‘I want to kiss you. I want to see you.’ Then it just kept going.”

Two weeks before Keaton was born on March 1, 2022, she told Armisen that she loved him. “It was weird, crazy timing,” she says. With them, their level of vulnerability increased gradually. Lindhome barely noticed they had entered into intimate territory until they were already there.

“We were friends for so long that it just happened fast. We had one dinner and then it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, let's see where this goes.’ It was surprising. I would say it was more of a shock to him. He did not see it coming at all.”

After the birth, she moved into Armisen’s home with Keaton to start their family life. Three months later, the couple got married. “I was ready to date him, I didn’t know what it would turn into,” she says. “I thought maybe I would be a single mom with a boyfriend. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t even know if he was interested at first — I didn’t know anything. But it was a natural evolution,” she continues.

“Then we got married in a courthouse," she continues. "It's not a secret, but we didn’t really tell people. We didn’t announce it or anything. And we thought people would hear about it eventually. And that’s what happened, one friend at a time.”

On their wedding day, Lindhome wore a white sundress she bought from the Glendale Galleria mall at Macy’s and Armisen wore a suit. Their 3-month-old son Keaton joined them for the ceremony along with one friend as a witness. “I didn’t even tell my mom,” admits Lindhome. “I never wanted to get married. I am not a wedding person. It’s not for me. But this was just for us. We also didn’t want to hurt people’s feelings by not having a wedding — and we didn’t want to get pressured into having one. We just wanted to be like, ‘Guess what we did a few months ago?’”

Lindhome says the couple kept it simple. There was no engagement and they picked out the rings themselves. But their jewelry didn’t arrive on time, so they had to wear temporary ones for the ceremony. The two picked a random Wednesday afternoon to get married, so they could honor the time they fell in love on set.

“The wedding was three minutes long and then we got some ice cream,” she says. A year later, the newlyweds celebrated their matrimony in Iceland.

“I'd always wanted to go, but I wasn’t ready to take our son or leave him behind. With a newborn, you just want to nest. I just wanted to be around the baby all the time,” she explains. “But he stayed with my parents and we went for four days. I didn’t want to be away from the baby that long. He’s not my biological child, so I wanted to make sure he feels steady and he's got a family. I don’t want to confuse him or accidentally create some wound that I don’t know I’m creating,” she adds. “But the trip was so fun.”

Lindhome describes her relationship to Armisen as “calm and easy” and says their son Keaton — who was "probably" named after Diane Keaton or "maybe Alex P. Keaton, I just like the name" — is the “coolest little guy.”

“I wouldn’t trade anything about him... nothing,” Lindhome says playfully then gets serious. “I know everyone thinks they have the best baby, but I think I have the best baby too. For him, I want to give him as many advantages as possible. For instance, breastfeeding, getting the colostrum from the surrogate, some people would not be comfortable with that. But I'm like, ‘No, I want him to have as much as he can possibly have.'"

She's also planning to undergo DNA testing so she can understand his medical history. "I’m going to try to make up for the lack of information I have. I’m going to do what I can to give him the best, healthiest life that I can.”

Lindhome's leaning into all of his interests. Right now, he's "very into cleaning products," she says. Last Christmas, the actress bought four plungers for her son and placed them under the tree wrapped in bows. “I don’t think he knows what the plungers are used for, but he likes the feel of them. He was so excited," she shares. FaceTime with his grandparents often involves looking "in their broom closet,” she says, giggling.

He's also "obsessed" with cars "and his favorite thing to do is sit in them. But he’s so cute with his little curls. He’s just awesome,” she adds. “I feel like I am day-by-daying this. There is that sort of thing about parenting where you're like, days are long, years are short. You're just like, ‘Oh, what happened?’”

Lindhome will share her entire journey to motherhood in her new musical Dead Inside, playing at the Edinburg Festival Fringe July 31-August 25 — and says that her story had the most unexpected, beautiful twists and turns.

Before she got serious with Armisen, one friend actually predicted they would be together.

“He’s single now,” a friend said to Lindhome before Armisen arrived on set five months after her. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I heard that. My mind is not there at all’ and she was like, ‘I don’t know. You both have a lot of fun together. You’re good friends.’"

"I didn’t believe her, but she called it, which is funny,” Lindhome continues. “The traditional way to land a man is not to have a baby by yourself and move to Romania.”

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Although she admits her husband may have been hesitant at first, Lindhome wanted him to arrive at the decision on his own. “I’m sure he had reservations, I’m sure. I had been planning on being a single mom. I wasn’t planning on adding another entity into the mix,” she explains.

“It was something we had to find together and see if it could work. Every relationship has a different pace. Every single one. Mine was faster because I was in a different circumstance. But we just went at the pace that was natural. It didn't feel rushed. We just found our rhythm together,” she smiles, adding that it could have been disastrous situation. "But it wasn't. It felt like it just was good."

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