Joaquin Phoenix Refers to Rooney Mara as His ‘Wife,’ Sparks Marriage Rumors

Joaquin Phoenix just referred to longtime love Rooney Mara as his “wife.”

While discussing his 2020 Oscars acceptance speech during a rare podcast appearance, Phoenix, 49, sparked marriage rumors after seemingly referring to Mara, 39, as his “wife” publicly for the first time.

During the Sept. 29 episode of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, Phoenix revealed that he ultimately found the inspiration for the speech while he “was talking with my mom and my wife.”

Moments later, Phoenix referred to Mara by first name in the retelling of how he created his speech, saying, “Rooney was like, ‘That’s what you should say!’ ”

In his conversation with Fragoso, Phoenix did not further clarify whether he and Mara are legally married.

Reps for Phoenix and Mara did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

The actors, who met in 2012 on the set of Her, have been publicly dating since 2017 and got engaged in 2019.

The pair are also parents to a son, River — whom they welcomed in 2020 and named after Phoenix’s late brother — and currently expecting a second child.

Both Mara and Phoenix are often private about their relationship and home life, but the latter did previously reveal that he thought his now-partner — who played his ex-wife in the sci-fi film — didn’t like him at first.

He later learned that she was just shy, he told Vanity Fair in 2019. “She’s the only girl I ever looked up on the internet,” he said of Mara at the time. “We were just friends, e-mail friends. I’d never done that. Never looked up a girl online.”

After the couple went public with their relationship at Cannes Film Festival in May 2017, a source told PEOPLE that the actors “seem totally natural and easy.”

Later that year, Phoenix revealed that the couple had begun living together during an interview with T Magazine.

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Mara and Phoenix spoke publicly about their son was during an exclusive November 2020 op-ed for PEOPLE about the migrant children who were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, writing that “as new parents, it’s unbearable to imagine what it would feel like to have our child taken away from us for a day, let alone years.”

They have since shared bits of their parenting experience several other times, with Phoenix saying he hopes his son is a vegan, though he would “support him” regardless,  and Mara about getting advice from other working moms as she brought River on the Women Talking set with her.

The Carol star revealed her pregnancy with the couple’s second child earlier this year on the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival.