Relationship history between Justin and Hailey Bieber

Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber’s relationship stretches back more than a decade, to a backstage introduction at one of the pop star’s Today show appearances in 2009.

The pair later sparked romance rumors — which they repeatedly denied — after reconnecting at church in 2014. They went on to date, with Justin telling GQ in 2016 that he was hesitant to commit to an exclusive relationship for fear of hurting Hailey in case they ended up together. “What if Hailey ends up being the girl I’m gonna marry, right? If I rush into anything, if I damage her, then it’s always gonna be damaged,” he said at the time.

While the two ultimately had a “very dramatic” split in 2016, they reunited in June 2018 and embarked on a whirlwind month-long romance that culminated in a Bahamas engagement and subsequent courthouse marriage.

Now a few years into married life, the Biebers are more candid than ever about the struggles they faced early on in their relationship and how they’ve worked to overcome them. Here’s everything you need to know about Justin and Hailey Bieber’s lasting love story.

The pair were initially introduced over a decade ago, in a brief meet-and-greet captured on camera backstage at a Today show appearance for the “Baby” singer, according to Vogue. Hailey, then 12 years old, shyly shook the pop star’s hand at the behest of her dad, actor Stephen Baldwin, whose friendship with Justin’s mother, Pattie Mallette, had prompted the meeting.

Two years after their initial meeting, the pair were photographed again — along with Hailey’s dad — at the 2011 premiere of Justin’s Never Say Never documentary in New York City.

Hailey later clarified to Vogue that while she found Justin “cute,” she was never a Belieber.  She told the outlet, “I was never a superfan, of him or of anyone. It was never that crazed, screaming thing. I didn’t think about it in any kind of way except for the fact that he was cute. Everybody had a crush on him. But for the first few years we had a weird age gap.”

In both May and September 2011, Hailey expressed her support for the romance between Justin and Selena Gomez, which would continue on and off until just a few months before she and Justin got engaged in 2018.

“I don’t care what anyone says but Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez together is the definition of a teenage dream! #word,” Hailey said in a since-deleted tweet in May 2011. A few months later, she doubled down on her stance, tweeting, “I’m for sure 100% team #Jelena.”

Hailey tweeted at the singer a number of times over the years, including a January 2012 compliment on his hairdo at the time.

“Can we just talk about your dark hair for a second…” Hailey tweeted, adding the hashtag “#itlooksreallygood.”

The model and musician were seen standing next to each other — as well as pal Kendall Jenner — at a service at the New York outpost of the Australian megachurch.

Hailey later told Vogue that the pair’s friendship blossomed after reconnecting at church. “One day Justin walked into Hillsong and was like, ‘Hey, you got older.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ Over time he became my best guy friend. I was running around with him as his homie, but we weren’t hanging out [romantically].”

The pair insisted that they were just “good friends” and that there was “nothing more to it,” according to an interview Hailey did with E! News following an uptick in their Instagram photos together. “I’ve known him since I was so young — since I was like 13 — and we’ve just been good friends over the years,” she told the outlet, adding, “We have just stayed close and there’s nothing more to it than that.”

Justin appeared to be on the same page, posting a photo of him and Hailey on Instagram later that month with the caption, “People are crazy. I’m super single and this is my good friend u would know otherwise.”

The pair celebrated their first New Year’s Eve together, as seen in a clip Justin posted to Instagram of the duo taking in the fireworks alongside a friend.

Hailey joined the “Boyfriend” singer and his family — including his father and siblings — on a highly-publicized vacation in Tulum, Mexico over the December holidays in 2015 — just a few weeks after Justin was spotted serenading on-and-off love Gomez at a hotel in Beverly Hills. Justin documented the trip with a number of photos and videos of himself and Hailey on Instagram.

The pair rang in the New Year together for the second year in a row, this time locking lips at Leonardo DiCaprio’s New Year’s Eve party in St. Barts, where Justin performed for the A-list crowd. The pop star didn’t seem shy about showing off his new love — he even shared a photo of the pair’s sultry smooch on Instagram.

In GQ’s March 2016 cover story, Justin addressed his relationship with Hailey, describing her as “someone I really love. We spend a lot of time together.” He explained that there was already “a lot that [he had] to commit to” and that adding a girlfriend to the mix felt like a recipe for disaster. “I know that in the past I’ve hurt people and said things that I didn’t mean to make them happy in the moment. So now I’m just more so looking at the future, making sure I’m not damaging them,” he said, before noting that he was making decisions with his and Hailey’s potential future union in mind. “What if Hailey ends up being the girl I’m gonna marry, right? If I rush into anything, if I damage her, then it’s always gonna be damaged. It’s really hard to fix wounds like that. It’s so hard … I just don’t want to hurt her.”

For her part, Hailey confirmed to E! News that the duo were “not an exclusive couple. He’s about to go on tour,” she said. “Relationships at this age are already complicated, but I don’t really like to talk about it because it’s between me and him.”

The two went their separate ways some time after the GQ story was published in February — and before Justin was linked to Sofia Richie in August of that year (a brief romance that lasted just six weeks).

“Negative things happened that we still need to talk about and work through,” Hailey later told Vogue of their split.

“‘Fizzled’ would not be the right word — it was more like a very dramatic excommunication,” she explained. “There was a period where if I walked into a room, he would walk out.”

In May 2018, she also told The Times U.K. that the pair “went through a long period of time when we weren’t friends,” adding that “there was a lot of weirdness that went on.”

Following Justin’s months-long reunion with Gomez — which spanned from October 2017 until March 2018 — and Hailey’s Met Gala appearance with Shawn Mendes (whom she denied a romantic relationship with), the pair reunited at a church conference in Miami, followed by festivities at LIV nightclub.

“The common denominator, I promise you, is always church,” Hailey told Vogue the following year of their reconciliation. “By then we were past the drama. I just gave him a hug. By the end of the conference, he was like, ‘We’re not going to be friends.’ I was like, ‘We’re not?’ ”

The pair’s rekindled romance soared to new heights over the rest of the month, with a number of PDA-fueled public appearances, from toweling each other off in Miami to canoodling in Brooklyn and The Hamptons and attending a church service together in Washington.

The pair shocked fans when news broke that the singer had popped the question to Hailey during a romantic dinner at a local restaurant while on vacation in the Bahamas.

RELATED: Justin Bieber Shares Sweet Selfie with His ‘Favorite Girls’ — His Wife and Sisters! — from Seaside Location

“It’s kind of a surprise, but kind of not. Justin has been extremely happy these past few weeks,” a source told PEOPLE. “He has known Hailey for a long time. This might seem sudden, but they know each other very well.”

Justin was quick to confirm the pair’s happy news on Instagram, addressing his bride-to-be: “Hailey I am soooo in love with everything about you! So committed to spending my life getting to know every single part of you loving you patiently and kindLY,” he wrote. “I promise to lead our family with honor and integrity letting Jesus through his Holy Spirit guide us in everything we do and every decision we make. My heart is COMPLETELY and FULLY YOURS and I will ALWAYS put you first! You are the love of my life Hailey Baldwin and I wouldn’t want to spend it with anybody else.”

The pair moved into Justin’s home outside of Toronto together shortly after getting engaged, they revealed to Vogue the following February. The outlet reported that the pair were in couple’s therapy while adjusting to living together.

The musician and model were seen at a courthouse in lower Manhattan where they issue marriage licenses, with Hailey in an all-white ensemble for the occasion.

Two months after tying the knot, the model, né Hailey Baldwin, changed her social media handle to Hailey Rhode Baldwin Bieber.

Marking their first photoshoot together, the newlyweds posed for a series of adorable photos for Vogue’s cover story in early 2019. In a wide-ranging interview, the newlyweds covered everything from their 2016 split to Justin’s year of self-imposed celibacy which preceded their union to the ups and downs of navigating marriage in your early 20s.

“I’m not going to sit here and lie and say it’s all a magical fantasy,” said Hailey. “It’s always going to be hard. It’s a choice. You don’t feel it every single day. You don’t wake up every day saying, ‘I’m absolutely so in love and you are perfect.’ That’s not what being married is. But there’s something beautiful about it anyway—about wanting to fight for something, commit to building with someone.”

Over a year after initially saying “I do,” the pair celebrated with a larger ceremony in front of over 150 family and friends at the Montage Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton, South Carolina, PEOPLE confirmed.

In an episode of Justin’s Seasons docu-series, he shared that getting “to share my life with [Hailey] just makes it so much more rewarding.”

“He was the first person I ever had real feelings for,” Hailey added. “When things kind of went south for a little bit and we went our separate ways, I just knew that no matter what the outcome was going to be, he was going to be somebody that I loved for the rest of my life. No matter what, he was always going to hold a special place in my heart.”

The pair got matching tattoos in March 2021, celebrating Bieber’s chart-topping single “Peaches.”

One day after Bieber debuted his new ink — a small peach, located on his neck — his wife showed off her identical tat on the inner part of her left arm. Both of the tiny tattoos were done by celebrity-loved tattoo artist Doctor Woo.

 “I think ideally in the next couple of years we would try,” the model told WSJ Magazine about her and Justin’s timeline for expanding their family. “But there’s a reason they call it try, right? You don’t know how long that process is ever going to take. Definitely no kids this year; that would be a little bit hectic, I think.”

The model revealed on her Instagram Story that she had been hospitalized for a mini-stroke on March 10, explaining that she “was sitting at breakfast with my husband when I started having stroke-like symptoms and was taken to the hospital.”

Describing the event as “one of the scariest moments I’ve ever been through,” Hailey later detailed the experience on her YouTube channel, revealing that she was ultimately diagnosed with a PFO — a small opening in the heart that usually closes after birth.

She then underwent a procedure to close the PFO, which she shared went “very smoothly.”

Justin spoke out about the harrowing event during a concert in Denver a few days later. “Obviously you guys know, most of you probably know or seen the news about my wife,” he began. “She’s okay, she’s good. It’s been scary, you know, it’s been really scary but I know for a fact that God has her in the palm of his hands.

Marking their first joint red carpet appearance since the model’s health scare, the pair stole the spotlight at the Grammys — where Bieber was up for eight nominations — and showed some sweet PDA on the carpet.

After the couple’s red-hot red carpet appearance, fans began speculating that the model’s flowing gown was covering up a baby bump — a rumor she was quick to shut down. “I’m not pregnant leave me alone,” she wrote on Instagram.

During an interview with Apple Music’s Ebro Darden shared exclusively with PEOPLE, the Drew House founder opened up about his mental health journey and some of the harder truths his marriage has helped him to face.

“It’s a journey. I remember when I first got married, I hit a little bit of an emotional breakdown because I thought marriage was going to fix all my problems and it didn’t,” Justin said. “It just kind of was a reflection of like, man, you’re a bit of a hypocrite man.”

“You want your wife to do something that you’re not doing and it’s like, it’s hard sometimes to look in the mirror and really have to realize, man, maybe you’re not the person that you necessarily thought that you were,” he continued. “And that’s just a result of trauma and life circumstances.”

After postponing a few dates on his Justice tour, Justin revealed on Instagram that he was diagnosed with Ramsay hunt syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that caused paralysis on the right side of his face.

Later that month, a source close to the couple opened up to PEOPLE about how Justin and Hailey were handling their health scares. “Hailey has been so supportive of Justin, just like he supported her with her health issues,” the friend said. “They’re unbreakable.”

Hailey also reassured fans that Justin was going to be okay during an appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan. “He’s going to be totally fine,” she said. “This is just a really out-of-nowhere, weird situation,” adding that she and her husband are now “closer than ever.”

Source: People.com