After all, are Mickey and Minnie Mouse really married?

If the Mickey Mouse is the most famous mouse in the world, so his companion, Minnie Mouse, certainly also deserves the same title. Debuting on screen at the end of 1928 with the short “Steamer Willie”, both Mickey and Minnie will celebrate more than 80 Valentine’s Days together in 2024.

However, some people speculate about what kind of relationship the two establish with each other, since during the animations, Mickey is sometimes married to Minnie, sometimes just courting her. In the September 30, 1933, issue of Film Pictorial magazine, Walt Disney comments exactly on this question:

In private life, Mickey is married to Minnie. Many people ask this question because sometimes he appears to be married to her in his films and other times he still courts her. What it really means is that Minnie is, for screen purposes, your protagonist. If the story calls for a romantic courtship, then Minnie is the girl; but when the story calls for a couple, they appear as husband and wife. In the studio we decided that they are already married.”

Over the years, Minnie has often been the biggest impetus in Mickey’s story. Whether with the aim of winning her over or just winning some competition present in the plot, the character always manages to get the mouse to fall into his favor, or vice versa.

In the short film “O Alfaiatezinho Valente”, released in 1938, this is exactly the case. When the king offers Mickey a lot of money as a reward in exchange for his position as a giant slayer, the character remains unsure whether he should accept or not. Only when Minnie kisses and smears lipstick on Mickey’s face does he rethink his decision; check out:

After 1952, with the story “Pluto’s Christmas Tree”, Mickey and Minnie stopped appearing on screen together for 33 years. The couple’s return only happened in the 1980s, in “Mickey’s Christmas Carol”, where, since then, they have never been separated.