Photo: Getty Images
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are currently one of Hollywood’s most beloved power couples—we love to watch them troll each other endlessly on social media and support each other’s various projects on the red carpet.
The couple (who married in 2012) now have three daughters together—James, Inez, and Betty—as well as a fourth child on the way. But how did Serena van der Woodsen and Deadpool get here? Let’s take a trip down memory lane and remember all the major milestones in their relationship.
Photo: Getty
September 2010: Lively and Badgley call it quits. “They’re still good friends and hang out on the set,” a source told Us Weekly at the time.
December 2010: Reynolds files for divorce from Johansson.
October 2011: Dating rumors begin after Lively is spotted leaving Reynolds’s Boston apartment with the actor early in the morning.
December 2011: Paparazzi catch the new couple holding hands in Vancouver while visiting Reynolds’s family during the holidays.
September 2012: On September 10, Lively and Reynolds pull off their secret ceremony at the Boone Hall Plantation in South Carolina. People reported that Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine, performed at the reception. “Ryan and Blake wanted the event to look and feel like home,” wedding planner Tara Guerard said. “We created the charm, elegance and magic of times past. It was a truly beautiful celebration.” The bride wore Marchesa, while the groom chose Burberry.
“When Ryan first saw her, his face broke into a huge smile that crinkled his eyes,” a source said. “They just stared at each other with absolute love. Their faces were lit up with the candlelight, and it looked like something out of a romance movie.”
September 2013: Lively opens up about married life to Lucky magazine. “I was recently asked how my style has changed since I got married, as if I was living under some sort of dictatorship,” she said. “I should hope I dress differently at 25 than I did when I graduated high school. I hope I never stop changing.”
She also said of her husband, “I’m very lucky to be with someone who has better taste than me. We influence each other in different ways. With film and TV, you don’t see the results for months. Building a home, you get immediate gratification.”
August 2014: In an interview with Vogue, Lively practically gushes about her partnership with Reynolds. “Everything we do in life, we do together,” she said. “I get to share my life with the person he’s become, and we get to grow from there.”
September 2014: For the first time, Lively mentions the idea of having kids with Reynolds. “He’s my best, best friend. What do you do with your best friend? You do nothing. If I could spit out a litter of kids, I would,” she told Marie Claire.
October 2014: Sure enough, just one month later, Lively announces her pregnancy with the couple’s first baby on her now defunct lifestyle website, Preserve.
Photo: Getty
January 2015: Multiple reports surface that Lively gave birth in January. “The baby came early but everyone is happy and healthy,” a source told Us Weekly. “The Bedford house is all prepared. They’re going to stay up there for the baby’s first days.”
March 2015: Reynolds finally reveals the name of his daughter. “It’s James. Everyone knows,” he told the Today show. “I didn’t want to be the first guy screaming it out to the media, because as we know, little girls turn into teenage girls and little teenage girls sometimes scan through the archives and go, ‘Why did you do that?’”
May 2015: Reynolds shares the first photo of baby James’s…hand.
“Thumb wrestling isn’t always fair,” he captioned the photo. “Curiously, my hand is the small one.”
February 2016: Reynolds opens up about their first date for Entertainment Weekly. “We were buddies then. I remember it was funny because for about a year after Green Lantern had come and gone and all that stuff, we were both single,” he recalled. “We went on a double date. She was on a date with another guy, and I was on a date with another girl. That was the most awkward date [from their perspective] probably because we were just like fireworks coming across.”
April 2016: Baby No. 2 is on the way, Us Weekly reports after the actress was photographed in a fitted wetsuit on the set of The Shallows.
Blake Lively at 69th annual Cannes Film Festival in 2016. Photo: Getty
July 2016: Lively talks about the couple’s close relationship with Marie Claire. “I knew he would always be my best friend for my whole life,” she said. “That was the biggest thing to me. I’d never known anything like the friendship that I had with him. I could like him as much as I loved him.”
September 2016: The couple’s second daughter, Inez, is born.
November 2016: Reynolds reveals how he knew Lively was “the one.”
“No, we were hanging out at this little restaurant in Tribeca that’s open really late, and this song came on and I was just like, ‘Want to dance?’” he told British GQ. “No one was in there, so it was just totally empty. And it was just one of those moments where halfway through the dance, it was like, ‘Oh, I think I just crossed a line.’
“And then I walked her home. And, uh, you know, I don’t really need to go into what happened after that.”
December 2016: Though Lively and Reynolds keep their kids’ lives pretty private, both of their daughters make a rare public appearance when Reynolds gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Proud is a pitiful word to describe how I felt today,” Lively wrote on Instagram at the time. “@vancityreynolds The permanence of your impact is undeniable …Always has been, but now we have a fancy [star] to show for it.”
Photo: Getty
October 2017: Lively talks with People about what makes their marriage work. “My husband and I don’t work at the same time, so we all go together as a family,” she said. “If we’re away as a family, it’s never more than for a day. We stay together.”
February 2018: Another way Reynolds and Lively keep their relationship fresh is their constant (and hilarious) online trolling of each other. Like when he posted a photo of the Valentine’s Day cake he made—with glue as the icing.
May 2018: They even use the trolling to promote their projects, like Lively’s movie A Simple Favor.
You can tell me. We’re married. You once drove me to the hospital when you were giving birth. So… what the fuck happened to Emily? https://t.co/W5vWQI9TVr
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) May 26, 2018
May 2019: On May 2, the couple announces they are expecting their third child on the red carpet for the Detective Pikachu premiere.
Photo: Getty
August 2019: Reynolds gets back to his trolling ways in honor of his wife’s 32nd birthday—and in the process gives the world some new pregnancy photos.
October 2019: The world learns Lively had given birth to the couple’s third child, but it reportedly happened two months prior and they kept it a secret from the public. Though Reynolds revealed on Twitter that he and Lively had welcomed another daughter, they didn’t share her name at the time.
“I love B.C. 🇨🇦 I want my daughters to experience the same natural playground I grew up in. On Oct. 21, the candidate you vote for will SHAPE CLIMATE POLICY. I’m proud of the climate progress made the last 4 years. Click http://Elections.ca for voting info. #Capilano,” he wrote.
I love B.C. 🇨🇦 I want my daughters to experience the same natural playground I grew up in. On Oct. 21, the candidate you vote for will SHAPE CLIMATE POLICY. I’m proud of the climate progress made the last 4 years. Click https://t.co/gJ8wvRwD2y for voting info. #Capilano pic.twitter.com/a3itOeIqQx
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) October 17, 2019
July 2020: Fans speculated that Taylor Swift revealed the name of their third daughter with her song “Betty.” Both “James” and “Inez” were the other characters in the song, so it was a natural conclusion.
November 2020: Reynolds shared the secret to raising three daughters with Lively. “We don’t split up,” he said in an Access Hollywood interview. “I shoot movies and my wife shoots movies and we go travel all over the place and we just all go together. I think that’s been the best part of it is that we really don’t spend a lot of time apart. I get to spend a lot of time with my girls.”
He also revealed he “never in a million years would have imagined” raising all girls. “I come from all boys. I have three older brothers. I’m the youngest of four boys, so for me to have three daughters has been such a ride,” he said. “I love every second of it.”
February 2021: Blake Lively let Reynolds dye her hair during quarantine. This isn’t a big life update but definitely shows a strong level of trust!
April 2021: The couple gave fans a rare look into one of their date nights. On April 30, the pair ventured out to a Yankees game and clearly had a blast together. Lively referred to the date as the start of “Mom&Dad Girl Summer.”
Reynolds also shared a sweet selfie from the evening to his feed.
November 2021: Reynolds shares the secret that’s made his nine-year marriage to Lively so wonderful. “We don’t take each other too seriously, but we’re also friends,” he told ET Online. “Falling in love is great, but do you like each other? That’s kinda the question you gotta ask yourself, you know, going into it. We’ve always liked each other. We grow together. We learn from each other. So yeah, I’m lucky to have a buddy in that.”
February 2022: For their ninth Valentine’s Day as a married couple, Lively shared a sweet selfie of the pair on his Instagram, writing: “Find me a better friend. ♥️ I’ll wait…” So true bestie.
March 2022: Lively, a Met Gala queen, and her husband are chosen as cochairs for the 2022 Met gala alongside Regina King and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Will anything top her 2018 Versace dress on the carpet, though? Probably not.
Blake Lively attends “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & the Catholic Imagination”, the 2018 Costume Institute Benefit at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 7, 2018 in New York City. Photo: Getty
March 2022: Reynolds has emphasized the importance to vote and safeguard Canada’s natural beauty before, so it’s no surprise the actor and his wife donated a cool half a million dollars to Water First, an NGO, helping ensure safe drinking water to Canada’s Indigenous populations.
“Canada’s home to 20% of the world’s freshwater,” Reynolds wrote on Instagram. “There’s absolutely no acceptable reason Indigenous communities don’t have access to clean, safe water.”
May 2022: Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds walked the Met Gala 2022 red carpet together as cochairs of the annual event. They embraced the “Gilded Glamour” thing in style, wouldn’t you say?
Met Gala cochairs Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds attend the 2022 Met Gala celebrating the Costume Institute’s exhibit “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022, in New York City. Photo: Getty
September 2022: Lively reveals that she and Reynolds are expecting a fourth child by showing up with her bump at a Forbes Women in Power event on September 15, 2022.
Photo: Getty
Originally published in Glamour.com
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