It was the news that broke the internet. When Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced their separation via Paltrow’s blog Goop, it crashed. And for good reason. Eleven years is a long time. Especially so for a celebrity couple who’ve worked so hard to preserve their privacy while living life in the public eye.
The couple, who have two children — daughter Apple, nine, and son Moses, seven — say they will always be a family despite the separation.
Here is a look back at the couple’s 11-year relationship:
The meeting: Rumour has it
Apparently, it all started with a rumour. “It’s funny because people had started writing that we were going out and we had never even met,” Paltrow told the UK’s The Sun about their first meeting in 2002 at a Coldplay concert. The pair was introduced backstage after the concert and, well, sparks flew. Martin helped Paltrow cope with her father’s death that occurred three weeks earlier, even writing her the ultra-popular song Fix You and the heart-wrenching tune Swallow. Paltrow admitted in an interview that she was “amazed” Martin stuck with her throughout those tough times as she was a “wreck”. By the next year, they were married.
The wedding: My baby’s got a secret
One year after a whirlwind romance, the couple tied the knot at a secret wedding on December 5, 2003, in California. So secretive was the wedding that no family members, including Paltrow’s mum, attended the ceremony. It came out of the blue and was a shock to many fans, as one night earlier, Paltrow made an appearance on The Tonight Show and kept completely mum on her upcoming nuptials. The shot-gun wedding came two days after they had announced that they were expecting a baby.
The children: The apples of their eyes
Apple Blythe Alison Martin was born a year after the couple married. When Paltrow found out she was pregnant, she quit smoking. Asked by Oprah why they chose the name Apple, Paltrow replied that it was ‘sweet’, ‘clean’ and ‘perfect’. The couple welcomed son Moses Bruce Anthony Martin into their family two years later, named after a song that Martin wrote for Paltrow before they wed. Paltrow admitted to suffering from postnatal depression after the birth of her son. In 2010, she told Ellen Degeneres she would “love to have another child at some point”.
The careers: Highs and lows
Paltrow tried to slow her Hollywood footsteps to take on more mummy duties, but her and Martin’s careers saw some of their most notable moments after their kids were born. Paltrow starred in many a noughties flop — Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Running with Scissors, and The Good Night, to name a few — but she also shone as Pepper Potts in the Iron Man trilogy between 2008 and 2013. For his part, Martin won several major awards post-fatherhood, including Best Rock Album in 2009 for Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, one of the band’s most commercially successful albums to date.
The rumours: Now you see us, now you don’t
In 2009, rumours were flying around that the couple had hit a rough patch. The pair were rarely ever seen together, fuelling talk that they might have broken up right under everyone’s noses. Speaking to Elle magazine, however, Paltrow scoffed at the idea that being private people meant troubled waters. “It doesn’t behoove us to be a public couple,” she said. “He certainly doesn’t want to be that. We’ve never ever walked down a red carpet together, we never will. If people think that that means we’re not together, then — ha ha ha! – so be it.”
The end: Uncoupling and coparenting
On March 25, Paltrow and Martin announced the end of their romantic relationship, blind-siding the public in much the same way they did when they married in secret 11 years prior. Paltrow posted a statement to her blog, Goop, saying that they had decided to separate “with hearts full of sadness” after more than a year of trying to make it work. “We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been,” she wrote. “We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.”
