Embodiments relate to reducing a number of read ports for register pairs. An aspect includes maintaining an active pairing indicator that is configured to have a first value or a second value. The first value indicates that the wide operand is stored in a wide register. The second value indicates that the wide operand is not stored in the wide register. The operand is read from either the wide register or a pair of registers based on the active pairing indicator. The active pairing indicator and the values of the set of wide registers are stored to a storage based on a request to store a register pairing status. A saved pairing indicator and saved values of the set of wide registers is loaded from the storage respectively into an active pairing register and wide registers.