Kirk Cameron and Chelsea Noble: The End of a Beautiful Friendship

It was more “like” at first sight than love when Chelsea Noble met future hubby Kirk Cameron when she was cast two years ago to play his girlfriend Kate on ABC’s “Growing Pains.”

“Our whole relationship was built on such a natural friendship,” explains Noble, 26. “When we first started working together we were friends.”

But their friendship developed into love--”It kind of grew out of natural chemistry”--and the two devout Catholics tied the knot this past summer.

Noble, who hails from Cheektowaga, N.Y., and loves watching old romantic movies in her spare time, finds being married to her on-screen love interest to be the best of both worlds.

“We have such a mutual respect for each other as people and actors,” says the soft-spoken actress. “We are the best support for each other. We give each other constructive advice. We work to make our characters believable, but different from what we really are. I think it’s kind of more exciting because there is something natural between us.”

On Monday, Noble and Cameron turn on their “natural” charm in the new NBC holiday movie, “A Little Piece of Heaven,” in which Cameron plays a young man who tries to make good on a promise to find a friend for his developmentally disabled sister. Noble co-stars as his neighbor.

“It was a month before the wedding and this script came along,” Noble recalls. “I said (to Kirk), ‘You cannot pass up the script.’ There happened to be a role that I was right for, so we were fortunate to work on it together. We made plans for the wedding from our hotel in Toronto.”