“Modern Family” Stars: Unveiling Their Lives Post-Show! Discover the Fascinating Evolutions, From Dramatic Transformations to Quiet Revelations.

Success is one percent inspiration, 98 percent perspiration and two percent attention to detail. And regardless if that math is mathing, the Modern Family cast is thriving years after they signed off.

As a wise man once said, life is full of changes, some big, some small.

And for the cast of Modern Family, wrapping on their heartwarming comedy series after 11 seasons and some 250 episodes on April 8, 2020, proved to be a lot easier because they had people who loved them to help them face whatever life threw their way.

“We all love each other. It’s amazing,” Ariel Winter told E! News last October of her time spent as brainy Alex, the middle child of Ty Burrell and Julie Bowen’s Phil and Claire Dunphy. When “you spend so much time with people, you really do become the family that you portray.”

Which is why she still thinks of Nolan Gould (rambunctious Luke Dunphy) as her brother.

“He was my first best friend, which is a really beautiful thing,” she explained. “We met when he was 10 and I was 11, and we’ve gone through so many stages of life together. And we have stuck through it all, thick and thin.”

That tight-knit bond is the same reason Sarah Hyland’s now-husband Wells Adams sought two sets of parental blessings before dropping to one knee in 2019.

“He asked my mom and dad for their blessing,” Hyland explained of The Bachelorette alum. “Then he also hunted down Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell for their blessing. They really, really are like my second set of parents.”

Which means, yes, Bowen was among those on hand for Hyland’s 2022 wedding to Adams (Burrell was originally meant to officiate, but turned over duties to costar Jesse Tyler Ferguson when his work schedule prevented him from attending).

Bonnie Osborne via Getty Images

The whole brood—which also includes Ed O’Neill, Sofía Vergara, Rico Rodriguez, Eric Stonestreet and Aubrey Anderson-Emmons—communicates much in the same way you’d expect “your own real family,” Winter noted to E!. “It could be a week; it could be a month. But I do keep in touch with a lot of them quite frequently.”

Still, she misses their days of being one big happy, well, you know.

“You go from working with somebody almost every single day for 12 years, and then it’s kind of like, poof,” she acknowledged. “Now everybody’s everywhere. So we try to keep in touch as much as we can.”