Tiffani Thiessen & Mark-Paul Gosselaar, ‘Saved By The Bell’s’ Zack & Kelly, Still ‘Like Brother And Sister’

Fans of TV’s Saved By the Bell will be glad to learn that after 30 years of friendship, Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski still hang out together, though it’s less often at The Max malt shop and milkshakes are no longer the drink of choice.

“We’re super, super close. We live not far from each other and I adore his wife and kids and he with my husband,” Tiffani Thiessen told People this week. And while she wouldn’t label the men “besties,” she did say that the two enjoy going out and drinking beer together.

While the friendship is still alive, the romance is not. Tiffani Thiessen has been married to Brady Smith since 2005 and Mark-Paul Gosselaar has been married to his second wife, Catriona McGinn, since 2012.

“We’re kind of like brother and sister. I know people probably don’t want to hear that, but you know, we grew up together. We traveled the world together. We’ve done a lot of things as “firsts” together. I mean, it was our first big success and our first TV show and we went to Europe together for the first time.”

Today, Thiessen can be seen in the Netflix series Alexa & Kate, where Tiffani plays the role of a mom of a teenager, while Gosselaar’s newest project is a pilot for the TV series The Passage. Mark-Paul was last seen in FOX’s Pitch which aired from 2016-2017.

Saved by the Bell originally aired on Saturday mornings on NBC and was a reboot of the Disney Channel show, Good Morning, Miss Bliss which aired from 1988 to 1989. The show starred former Disney child star Hayley Mills as the teacher as well as three of the characters from the latter series including Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, and Lark Voorhies. However, it wasn’t until the following year that Zach met Kelly. From 1989 to 1993, Zach and Kelly had an on-again, off-again romance and participated in just about every Bayside High School activity with their friends Screech (Diamond), Lisa (Voorhies), A.C. (Mario Lopez), and Jessie (Elizabeth Berkley). In 1993, several of the characters (including Zach and Kelly) appeared in the primetime spin-off series, Saved by the Bell: The College Years. The cast also starred two made-for-TV movies: Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style in 1992 and Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas in 1994 where Zach and Kelly finally tied the knot.

In 2015, most of the cast reunited while appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon recreating their Saved by the Bell characters in their high school personas and giving Tiffani Thiessen and Mark-Paul Gosselaar a more PG storyline than was usually found on the original show. Despite their ages, they didn’t look much different after all those years later.

In June of 2016, fans were given the chance to experience Zack and Kelly’s former hangout, The Max, when a vacant restaurant space in Chicago’s Wicker Park area opened as a pop-up restaurant as a replica of the famed malt shop.

While original episodes of Saved by the Bell have left the airwaves many years ago, the reruns of the series can still be seen on MeTV on Sunday mornings.