It’s one thing to build a legacy in Hollywood. It’s another to build that legacy alongside your day one. For Ryan and Zinzi Coogler, the journey from teenage lovebirds to cinematic power couple reads like the kind of stories they bring to the big screen–rich in history, love, and purpose.
Long before the world knew Ryan as the visionary behind “Sinners,” “Black Panther,” “Fruitvale Station,” and “Creed,” he was just a student athlete at Saint Mary’s College, grinding on scholarship and dreaming in screenplay format, literally. And by his side, even then, was Zinzi, an aspiring producer who believed in the vision and in the man behind it.
“We met when we were 13 or 14,” Zinzi recently shared with The Hollywood Reporter. “When you’re in a relationship with someone for that long, you pull each other into each other’s lives.”
And that’s exactly what they did, from college classrooms to film sets, boardrooms to box offices. In May 2016, the college sweethearts got married and now share two children together with a third one on the way. Though the couple likes to keep their relationship and family private, they’re love for each other shines through their projects. Zinzi, now a respected producer in her own right, has been instrumental behind the scenes of her husband’s biggest projects. Her fingerprints are on everything from “Creed III” to the couple’s latest horror hit, “Sinners.”
In 2021, the Cooglers and Zev Ohanian launched Proximity Media, a production company committed to telling stories rooted in culture, authenticity, and impact. Together, the company has produced not only Coogler’s latest horror film but also the six-time Oscar nominee “Judas and the Black Messiah” and more.
But behind the accolades and the red carpet moments, there’s been a quiet, consistent love powering this partnership. When Ryan was a “broke” college student struggling to write his early scripts in Microsoft Word, Zinzi pulled together what little money she had and bought him Final Draft, the industry-standard screenwriting software.
“My wife, she was my girl at the time, [and] they had a software where you could write screenplays. I was trying to write in Microsoft Word. It’s impossible because your format gotta be right,” he said in a Hot 97 interview. “And my wife scraped together some cheese and bought me Final Draft, which is the software that you write your movies on. And she got me that.”
And she was always by his side—when Ryan was accepted into USC’s elite film program or during the grind of early short films like “Locks,” which Zinzi associate-produced.
“He would often invite me into the most inappropriate meetings and places. From being in all of his classes at school to being on sets to being in rooms when he’s making deals with studio heads,” Zinzi told the publication.
But Ryan always knew he wanted her by his side. And the more he witnessed other cinematic couples like Zack and Deborah Snyder or J.J. Abrams and Katie McGrath, the more he saw what was possible.
“When we met Chris [Nolan] and Emma [Thomas], that’s when I started hard selling Zinzi,” Coogler shared, explaining how his wife is always the first person to hear his ideas.
“Knowing that Ryan’s tenacity and the way he works, there was a trust in him that he would deliver on this impossible task,” Zinzi said of her husband. “That is how we got here. It wasn’t by accident.”
