'General Hospital' star Jack Wagner's blunt marriage advice: ‘Quite often, it’s just keeping your mouth shut’
Jack Wagner shared his candid advice for maintaining a lasting relationship.
The 66-year-old actor and singer married his second wife, singer-songwriter Michelle Wolf, in May 2025 after more than four years of dating.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, Wagner, who recently competed on "The Masked Singer," reflected on how love feels different later in life and revealed the biggest lesson he has learned about making a marriage work.
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"Let the other person really be who they are and if there's a problem, conflict-resolving tools are the key to a marriage. And quite often, it's just keeping your mouth shut," he said.
"That's what I've found," Wagner continued. "If there is a problem, take a little — just let it go. And just a little, I think, space and silence, and it passes."
"It's just not as intense and personal and dramatic as I think what things were maybe when I was younger, or maybe she was younger, right?" he added. "You just kind of get a little wiser, I hope, as you get older."
Wagner was previously married to actress Kristina Wagner, née Malandro, 63. The two met on the set of "General Hospital," in which Kristina played Felicia Cummings, the love interest of Wagner’s character Frisco Jones.
The former couple shared two sons, Peter and Harrison Wagner. Harrison died in June 2022 at the age of 27.
Wagner and Wolf first connected through their music careers in 2021. Wagner previously told Soap Opera Digest that the duo "met in a recording session" when he was working on new music for which Wolf provided background vocals.
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Wagner and Wolf went public with their relationship a year later. The pair tied the knot during a private ceremony on May 18, 2025, at the Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles with around 40 close family members and friends in attendance, including Wagner's son Peter and Wolf's daughter Ornella from a previous relationship.
The actor, who starred as shipping tycoon Nick Marone on "The Bold and the Beautiful" from 2003 to 2012 and has since reprised the role in guest appearances, recalled that he and Wolf went on their honeymoon in Italy when he returned to the show for a new storyline arc in 2025.
"I talked to ["The Bold and the Beautiful" executive producer] Brad Bell, I ran into him, and this show gets a 60 share in Italy," Wagner told Fox News Digital. "So I said, 'You want me to do any press while I'm over there?' He goes, 'Wait a minute, how about if you come back to the show? I've got this storyline, we can wrap it up shooting in Naples.'"
"'We're like, 'let's honeymoon in Italy! So we went over for about five or six days and then worked for five days. So it was like, just to be honest, CBS paid for most of our honeymoon. So that was great," he said with a laugh. "And I did a nice three-month arc back on ‘The Bold and the Beautiful,’ which I love that show. I love the people on the show and Brad Bell and I are very good friends. So it was kind of one of those things where it worked for both of us, and it was great to be back on show."
Shortly after their wedding, Wagner made headlines when he said that he and Wolf had no plans to move in together after marrying.
In a June 2025 interview with Parade, "The Bold and the Beautiful" star revealed he and Wolf agreed not to "rock the boat" and stick to the routine they formed while dating.
"It's an adjustment in terms of my schedule, for sure, right? And Michelle's a singer, and she has an R&B rock band, so she's just a monster singer. We're able to make it work," Wagner said.
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During his recent interview with Fox News Digital, Wagner clarified his remarks, saying that the couple "don't really live in separate homes."
"We've kept our homes. And so we just go back and forth," Wagner explained. "She has a place in Malibu, gratefully. I live more in town so we can do in town or up there."
"We don't live separately," he continued. "I think I said that because I was doing a little guest appearance on ‘Bold and the Beautiful’ last year, we had just gotten married, and we don't really live separately, we just kept both of our homes. It's what works for us. We wanted to keep what worked and was magical for our relationship, leading into getting married, and it works."
"You know, it's nice to have a couple nights off from each other if we want," he added. "And that's what we do, and it really helps a relationship, I believe."
When asked whether he believed that he and Wolf's living arrangement would benefit other couples, Wagner noted their stage of life gives them the flexibility to structure their marriage in a way that works best for them.
"Listen, this is because I believe we're older and we don't have young children. When you're raising a family, it's different," he said. "So I think we've got the gift of being a little later in our lives to pick and choose how we want to live and what works for us."
"But I would say, yes," Wagner continued. "Maybe on a second marriage or whatever. I think you've got to get into reality about, 'Hey, this isn't personal. What's going to be best for the two of us to love each other in the deepest way we can?'" And sometimes having a little space makes it work better."
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Wagner recently competed on "The Masked Singer's" 14th season as the mystery contestant "Eggplant." He made his debut during the second week on Jan. 14 and competed for eight weeks before being eliminated and unmasked at the end of the "Ozzfest Night" episode on March 4.
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Wagner, who stars in the hit Hallmark series "When Calls the Heart," explained that he was unable to keep his participation in the show a secret due to his filming schedule.
"We were wrapping season 13 when I started shooting ‘The Masked Singer.’ So I was going back and forth from Vancouver and the end of the season is a trial scene, and I'm pretty much leading the trial," he recalled. "I'm like Tom Cruise in ‘A Few Good Men.’ I've got all the dialogue."
Wagner said that his fellow cast members began wondering why he was flying back and forth so frequently between Los Angeles and Vancouver, where "When Calls the Heart" is filmed, during production.
"So I'm like, 'Dude, I'm the eggplant on ‘Masked Singer.’ And they're like, ‘Eggplant?!’" he remembered with a laugh. "Hallmark had to know because they had to adjust my shooting schedule so you know it leaked out to the cast, and it was really a lot of fun to see."
Wagner went on to rave about his experience on "The Masked Singer," saying he would "totally do it again."
"I loved the eggplant. It was, I would say, cumbersome in terms of movement. My first song out of the box was ‘Rocket Man,’ which was just an unbelievable gift to sing, to be able to sing Elton John's ‘Rocket Man,'" Wagner recalled. "And I felt my vocal was pretty solid. I felt that it nailed it, so I honored the song properly."
"But when I saw it, what I was doing inside…it didn't really translate," Wagner continued. "It was really like sort of this wobbling, big sort of eggplant costume. So it was an adjustment to see it, but it didn't keep me from still trying to move as best I could."
"They had to drop the suit on top of me right, so I had to go through the opening below and then be fitted in and harnessed in and then stick my arms through these sleeves," he added. "So I guess the downside was I was limited in terms of being able to show my body or do anything with the ‘Linkin Park’ song or ‘American Woman.’"
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"So with ‘Linkin Park,’ I tried to do some jumping and whatever I could because I'm a theatrical performer, right? I've done a lot of stage and Broadway. And so I wanted to theatrically give my all, but I was a little limited because of the costume, yet then again, it was an adorable costume, you know, so it had some pluses and some minuses, if that makes sense."
Wagner also shared how Wolf reacted to his appearances on the show, saying that as a professional singer, she watched with a very trained eye, and she was genuinely impressed.
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"She really takes in ‘When Calls the Heart’. I watch her watch the show because she invests deeply. When she watches something, she just doesn't like kind of watch like dudes do. She watches totally intently," he explained.
"She saw what ['The Masked Singer' was] about, right?" Wagner continued. "She could see it's kind of — I don't use the word ‘goofy' — but it's fun-loving, right? This is a fun show. It's a lot of moving parts. I had to explain to her, 'You don't understand. We had to stop and go because they had to change sets for each character, like moving the dancing costumes and the dancers changed depending on the theme of the week."
"So she took it all in as an audience member and was always like, 'Wow, your vocal, the vocal's so good.' Because I told her I was strapped in with a mic, a headpiece in this thing bouncing around drenched. So she just gave a high regard for just being able to knock out a decent vocal under the circumstances."
"The Masked Singer" Season 14 airs new episodes on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on FOX, with streaming available the next day on Hulu and Disney+.