In this paper, we consider the stabilization of a 1‐D coupled string–riser system with partial frictional damping. The frictional damping is only distributed in the part of the string's or riser's domain, and its dissipative effect is transmitted to the other equation through the coupling. Firstly, we prove the existence and uniqueness result for solution of coupled system. Next, using a semigroup approach combined with the multipliers technique, we obtain that the two coupled systems are not exponentially stable, provide precise polynomial decay rates for their energy functionals, respectively, regardless of whether the friction damping only acts on the string equation or the riser equation, and give the optimality of polynomial decay rates. Finally, we compare the case of friction damping acting on string and riser equations simultaneously with the previous two cases. The results show that the case of friction damping acting on string and riser equations simultaneously is exponential stable, while the case of friction damping only acting on string or riser equations is polynomial stable and the decay result of friction damping only acts on the string equation is better than that only acts on the riser equation.