Josh Duhamel and Fergierevealed Thursday that they separated "earlier this year" and had intentionally kept it private for as long as possible to sort out what was best for their 4-year-old son, Axle. Duhamel had lasted posted a photo of the two of them together on Instagram on July 19.
But now that Fergie's in the middle of a press tour in support of the Sept. 22 release of Double Dutchess, her first new solo album in 11 years, perhaps it was time to face the music.
And to illustrate just how much of a U-turn these marital stories can take overnight, the most recent rumor they faced had to do with expanding the family, as opposed to moving the family into separate houses.
Though...hindsight.
"I have no idea what's in the future," Fergie said on Cubby and Carolina in the Morning less than a week ago. "Right now, I just turned all my videos in yesterday to everybody. It's like I'm birthing a different kind of baby. I feel like I'm birthing this thing out. It didn't come from my belly but it came from my soul."
She also answered the inevitable question about how she and Josh kept their marriage fresh after all these years, saying, "I have an Axl-safe costume closet where I have all my superhero stuff. That one doesn't have a combination. I do have one that's locked that's a little bit more mature."
So in the moment at least, all seemed status quo on the sexy front.
But sadly, Fergie and Duhamel, who met in 2004, got engaged in 2007 and tied the knot on Jan. 10, 2009, through no particular fault of their own have been one of those famous couples who always seemed to be running on borrowed time. Not in it for the long haul, despite their giddy early days. And yet their only-in-Hollywood meet-cute had strong legs.
She was Duhamel's dream girl after all.
The Win a Date With Tad Hamilton hunk had had an actual dream about the Black Eyed Peas singer before he ever saw her in the flesh, walking onto the set of his NBC drama Las Vegas.
"You're hot" was all Duhamel could muster at first.
"It sounds corny when you say it, but I think she knew I was sort of saying it tongue-in-cheek because she had already known that I had a little bit of a crush on her while she was there and it was sort of a way of saying something she already knew," Duhamel told E! News in 2014.
Indeed she did. And it apparently wasn't just a happy coincidence that brought her to Las Vegas that day. Fergie said in a 2007 interview with Playboy that she sought out her future fiancé on purpose because...well, word gets around.
"I had read in a magazine that he'd had a naughty dream about me," she said. "All my friends knew about him because he had been a soap opera star. I'm not into soap operas, but they told me, 'You gotta go out with him. Do it for the group. Take one for the team.'" She continued, "Time went by, and I saw on the schedule that we were taping a show called Las Vegas and I thought, 'Is that the show he's on?' We met, and I said, 'I read you had a dream about me.' He said, 'Yeah', and I asked, 'Was it good?' He said it was. So we pretty much hit it off straight away."