It’s official: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are no longer together. According to representatives for Los Angeles Superior Court, Kardashian has filed divorce papers citing irreconcilable differences as the reason. According to US media, their split is amicable and Kardashian is seeking joint legal and physical custody of their four children.
Their marriage was one of the most followed celebrity relationships and the press had even dubbed the couple "Kimye". Not a week went by without one or the other making headlines or causing a stir on social media. Here are the highlights of their relationship.
Once Upon a Time…
The couple first met in the 2000s, but years would pass before they became romantically involved. When interviewed by Kanye for Vogue Arabia, Kim revealed she was in awe when she first met the musician, but said that being around him made her feel "shy" and "nervous".
In his song Cold, released in 2012, the rapper revealed that he fell in love with Kim back when she was dating singer Ray J. in the mid-2000s.
In 2012, the couple announced that they were dating. Incidentally, back then Kardashian was still legally married to NBA player Kris Humphries
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First Child and Marriage
That same year, Kanye announced at a concert that the couple was expecting their first child. After welcoming their daughter North in summer 2013, the couple got engaged with the kind of pomp that is common to all celebrity relationships – West rented a baseball stadium and hired an orchestra to propose in front of her family and scores of cameras as the event was documented for the reality TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
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In 2014 the couple tied the knot in Florence, Italy in a ceremony that was described by the media as "a historic blizzard of celebrity". An image of the two kissing posted by Kardashian on Instagram back then became the most liked post ever, garnering 2.4 million likes.
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Second Child and First Cracks in Relationship
Kardashian said she always wanted a big family so the couple started trying for a second child and boy did they try. According to Kim, they experienced difficulties and had sex "500 times a day" to conceive. In 2015, the couple announced their second child and in December, their son Saint was born.
However, in 2016 reports started circling that the marriage was no longer blissful. The reason for these rumours was Kanye’s hospitalisation for a "psychiatric emergency".
Conceive a Child. Get in Headlines. Repeat.
Their next three years of marriage were a bit monotonous. In between pregnancies, the couple made headlines and stirred controversy – West claimed that slavery was a choice and maintained that Bill Cosby, who was found guilty of sexual aggravated sexual assault, was innocent, while Kardashian endorsed beauty products, and was robbed at gunpoint in Paris (something many claim was a PR stunt).
Thanks to surrogate maternity, they had their second daughter Chicago in 2018 and their second son Psalm in 2019. The couple had to resort to the measure as Kardashian suffered from preeclampsia after her first two pregnancies.
Kanye Finds God & Downward Spiral
In 2019, Kanye revealed that he had converted to Christianity and vowed to no longer make secular music. Later that year, he released the gospel album Jesus is King. Since then, the musician has often spoken about his religious beliefs and said that his Christian faith had saved him from porn and drugs. Rumours began to circulate that his views had started affecting their marriage.
For years, West flirted the idea of running for president, but in 2020 the rapper actually launched his presidential campaign. At a rally in South Carolina, he appeared to have what some health experts have described as a mental breakdown – he started crying when he spoke about how his father wanted to abort him and that he and Kim had considered aborting their first child.
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Later, the singer went on a now-deleted Twitter rant, in which he said he wanted to divorce Kim Kardashian, called his mother-in-law a tyrant and vowed to go to war with her. In addition, he claimed that the Kardashian family had tried to force him into psychiatric treatment.
Although he later issued a public apology to Kim and her mother, this apparently did little to save their marriage. After that point, reports say the couple spent little time together, while rumours suggested that Kanye even refused to see Kim.
The pair was then caught on camera having an emotional conversation in Wyoming.
New photos of Kanye and Kim (via TMZ) pic.twitter.com/cXkaMkY7V3
— Mr. Pop Charts (@MrPopCharts) July 28, 2020
In recent months, media said the couple maintained almost no contact. Reports say their divorce is going to be a peaceful one, as the two signed a prenuptial agreement that will allegedly resolve all financial issues.
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