On Vinod Khanna’s birth anniversary, here’s looking back at his love story with Kavita Khanna. The couple got married in 1990 and stayed together until he passed away in 2017.

Vinod Khanna and Kavita Khanna were married for 27 years. (Photo: Express Archives)

Vinod Khanna was at the peak of his career when he left everything to follow Osho Rajneesh and started living in Oregon at Rajneesh’s ashram. A few years later, when the ashram collapsed, Vinod came back and restarted his career but the family that he had left behind, his first wife Gitanjali and his sons Akshaye and Rahul, were still here. Vinod reconnected with his children but he was still looking for love. It was during this time that he accidentally met Kavita at a party, and just couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Vinod and Kavita came from different worlds. He was a movie star who was loved by millions, and she was a barrister, who was highly educated, yet they bumped into each other at a party at Khanna’s house where Kavita was just tagging along with a few friends. It wasn’t love at first sight as they didn’t even speak to each other but Vinod knew that there was something here so he called her the next day. “She kept ignoring my calls,” he recalled on Simi Garewal’s show as she interrupted and said that she wasn’t “ignoring” his calls just for the sake of it.

“I didn’t ignore his calls. He asked me out and I said, ‘Vinod, I don’t mind having you as a friend but forget about going out for dinner, my going to a party with you or anything like that,” she recalled and when asked the reason behind the same, Kavita said she fully understood “what would follow if I went out on a date with Vinod, you know what the implications of that were” and she did not want that.

Vinod married Kavita in 1990. (Photo: Express Archives)

But Vinod was persistent. He might not have been a lover boy on screen but Vinod was just that in real life as he would call her five times a day, and they would talk for hours. They were still not going out but would occasionally meet at a few parties. Kavita recognised the friendship they shared, but her logical mind did not allow her to give in.

One day, when she was going for a run, Kavita called Vinod and asked him if he wanted to join her. He said yes and by her own admission. “I went to his house, fetched him and we went jogging and then after that, we were just together every day till the day we got married,” she said.