Leighton Meester Opens Up About 'All the Good and the Hard' in Her Marriage to Adam Brody

"We're super, super lucky, and I think we recognize how lucky we are with one another," said the 'Gossip Girl' alum

Leighton Meester and Adam Brody's marriage may be low-key, but that doesn't mean the stars don't put in the work.

Nine years after the Gossip Girl alum, 37, and The O.C. lead, 43, tied the knot, she says it’s all about taking life and love as it comes.

Telling E! News about her “normal relationship with all the good and the hard," Meester added that "we just make it work.”

She continued, "We're super, super lucky, and I think we recognize how lucky we are with one another. We give each other a lot of respect and time and attention and focus. Like, really put our time and energy into a relationship."

Related: Adam Brody Says He and Leighton Meester Got Married 'Very Fast' — It Was an 'Easy' Decision

Meester — who currently starring opposite Robbie Amell in the Christmas movie EXmas — previously told PEOPLE that she makes a point to to find time for herself and her husband despite their busy schedules.

"It's just sort of day to day, I try to find little pockets of time that I can have to myself to write or exercise or surf or do therapy or be with my husband," she shared in August. "But, a lot of the time that doesn't end up happening how I thought, so it's trying to find little moments, for me time and to have some peace."

Related: Adam Brody Reflects on His Marriage to Leighton Meester: 'She's My Moral Compass and North Star'

The pair first worked together during the filming of 2011's The Oranges before making their first public outing as a couple on June 26, 2013, at the premiere of his film, Some Girl(s).

Brody noted in an April episode of the Stitcher Studious podcast Podcrushed that he "was smitten instantly" when he saw her for the first time at Canters Deli in Los Angeles.

“And I was, you know, smitten for a long time. I didn't get to know her for many years after, even though we even worked together briefly," he recalled. "She's so lovely, and she's so sweet."

"She's so nice. She's so good. And yet, and this is to her credit, she remained elusive to me for so long, you know, and aloof," he continued. "I couldn't get a total read because even though she professes to have been interested in me and all those things, not only did she not pursue that, I mean, she was perfectly willing to let that never happen."

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The pair eventually found their way to each other and married in 2014, which Brody recalled on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show was "an easy decision." The share 7-year-daughter Arlo Day and a son who was born in 2020.

"I was never scared of the idea of marriage or kids. It always seemed, you know, like a route I would go eventually," he added. "I was excited ... when it came together, when I met the right person," he said on the show.

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