These days, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are royalty as far as Hollywood couples go, but the Detective Pikachu star and the Age of Adaline actress were once just two friends out on a double date — with other people!
As Reynolds told Entertainment Weekly’s SiriusXM show in February 2016: “We went on a double date. She was on a date with another guy, and I was on a date with another girl — and that was, like, the most awkward date for the respective parties because we were just like fireworks coming across.”
Still, the Critics’ Choice winner said he was glad that the two started off as “buddies.” “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 said of their shared 2010 film. “I think the best way to have a relationship is to start as friends.”
It’s certainly worked out for the duo. Not only did they go to tie the knot in September 2012, but they have since welcomed three children together.
The pair share daughters James and Inez — born in 2015 and 2016, respectively — and a third daughter, born in the summer of 2019. Us Weekly broke the news of baby No. 3’s arrival in October 2019.
Nearly a year later, Taylor Swift released “Betty” on her Folklore album, sparking speculation that the couple named their youngest daughter Betty — she also sang about Inez and James on the track. In August 2020, the musician confirmed that she “named all the characters in this story after my friends’ kids.”
Ahead of becoming a family of five, Reynolds joked about the couple’s relationship trajectory.
“One of the most common things in the world is making out, having a couple of drinks, and then doing it, and then having a baby. I was perfectly sober for this one, though. I gotta say,” Reynolds told EW in his 2016 interview, after the pair’s second child was born. “It’s amazing.”
As for the Shallows star, she told Vogue in August 2014: “Everything we do in life, we do together. If I’m working on a movie, he helps me with my character; I do the same with him.”
They also famously troll one another on social media: Lively razzes Reynolds about his parenting skills, while he teases her cooking abilities, ranking them beneath pal Jake Gyllenhaal’s.
Scroll through to relive their romance: