Joel Madden Shares Secret for Keeping 17-Year Romance With Nicole Richie Strong

For 17 years, Joel Madden and Nicole Richie have kept their relationship and family life relatively private. Now, the Good Charlotte frontman is revealing the secret behind their successful marriage: therapy.

During an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Madden — who married Richie in 2010 after four years of dating — opened up about his home life with the model and their two children and explained why their marriage just works.

"The more you know her, the more you love her," Madden said about his wife. "It takes time to get to know her. She's just classy. Lionel [Richie] and Brenda [Harvey] did a good job. They raised someone with a lot of integrity and a lot of class."

"We've been together for 17 years now," he later added. "Don't ask me how."

After Barrymore did indeed ask him how, Madden said: "We got lucky with our kids. I always tell my kids, 'You make it so easy to be a dad.' They're just good kids and I think they're like their mom."

"I don't think we pretend to be perfect either," he added. "We're all human ... I was lucky to have my brother [Benji Madden] and to meet [Cameron Diaz], they have a beautiful relationship. To have this growing family of good people that are also imperfect and not trying to present like, we have it all figured out."

"But we work on ourselves and you guys all work on yourselves," Barrymore said.

"We go to therapy," he said. "Lots of therapy."

Madden and Richie — who share two children: daughter Harlow, 15, and son Sparrow, 14 — first got together after meeting at a party in 2006.

"When I met her, I think we were both on different trains," Madden told 60 Minutes Australia in 2013. "We might have just for a second got off at the same station and met each other, and then we both got on a completely different train."

"We met and we were partners from day one," Richie told Oprah Winfrey in 2014.