Coleen Rooney has done it all: she proudly flew the WAG flag alongside Victoria Beckham and Cheryl in the 2000s, became a modern-day detective amid the Wagatha Christie drama, and is now heading to the jungle as an I’m A Celeb campmate. “I do think people will get a better idea of what kind of person I am,” she said recently of her upcoming appearance on the show.
She met her husband, iconic football player-turned-manager Wayne Rooney, when the pair were still in secondary school in Liverpool, marrying in 2008. Their 16-year marriage hasn’t always been a smooth ride, though.
From cheating allegations and prostitutes to drink-driving offences, here’s a timeline of the ups and downs of the couple’s marriage.
2003: The proposal
Shortly after making his professional football debut, 18-year-old Rooney proposed to a then-17-year-old McLoughlin at a petrol station with an emerald-cut diamond ring worth £46,000, according to Coleen’s mother. Speaking in a BBC documentary in 2015, Colette McLoughlin said the couple were supposed to go out for a meal but Rooney couldn’t wait to pop the question. “They never went out for the meal. They came home and had corned beef hash,” she said.
2004: First controversy
A year into their engagement, the couple is hit with the first of many allegations of Rooney’s infidelity. According to the Sunday Mirror, the footballer had visited a Liverpool brothel 10 times – being pictured leaving on CCTV – where he paid for sex with three women aged 21, 37, and 48. In a public apology, he said: “Foolish as it now seems, I did on occasions visit massage parlours and prostitutes. I now regret it deeply and hope people may understand that it was the sort of mistake you make when you are young and stupid.”
Although Coleen didn’t comment on the scandal at the time, she later revealed in her 2023 autobiography that she hadn’t had sex with Wayne before he visited the brothel. “The truth is, and I’ve never said this before, at that time in our relationship, I’d never even slept with Wayne. I was only 16 and we weren’t having that kind of relationship at that stage,” she wrote.
2008: The wedding
Seemingly working through Wayne’s first wave of infidelity, the couple wed in Italy in the summer of 2008. The day reportedly cost £5 million, with Westlife and Stereophonics playing at the reception. The wedding wasn’t without a hitch, though. A local bishop’s office told the couple beforehand that the venue for their religious ceremony – the Abbey of Cervara – wasn’t suitable for weddings. Wayne and Coleen ignored the advice, with the Catholic Church going on to say that their wedding was not valid in the eyes of the church.
2010: More reports of infidelity
Almost a year after the birth of their first child, Kai, the couple is rocked by yet another report regarding Wayne’s cheating. This time, former escort Helen Wood claimed that Wayne had a threesome with her and another sex worker named Jenny Thompson while Coleen was pregnant – with Wayne going on dates with Thompson and showing her pictures of Coleen’s ultrasound scans. According to Wood, Wayne regretted the threesome immediately. “He said, ‘I feel really s*** already – I’m begging you two not to say anything. It will ruin my marriage if it gets out’.”
Although the couple didn’t speak on the claims, Coleen allegedly moved out of the home they shared and lived with her parents for a brief period, until they later reconciled.
2017: ... and more
Shortly after exiting Manchester United after playing for the team for 13 years, Wayne made headlines for a different reason in September: he’d been arrested and charged for drink driving after a night out just outside Manchester. If things couldn’t get any worse, the car he was driving wasn’t his own – it belonged to a local woman, Laura Simpson, whom he’d met that evening.
Coleen, who was pregnant with the couple’s fourth child and on holiday with her parents and children at the time, allegedly called Simpson after the arrest. “She asked me to tell her what happened,” Simpson told The Sun. “She seemed unhappy with the fact that we had left a nightclub in a cab together to go to my car.” She claims she apologised to Coleen.
While the Everton star was slapped with a two-year driving ban and ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work, his “heartbroken” wife took to Facebook to address the incident. “A few people are probably thinking am [sic] stupid for staying in my marriage. I am not stupid, I know my own mind and it’s something I want to try and work on,” she wrote. “I know I would be fine on my own, with just me and my children, but I don’t want to live like that, I want to try and continue our marriage and live as a family, because that’s what I want to do.”
In her husband’s 2023 Amazon documentary Rooney, Coleen revealed that it nearly pushed the couple to breaking point. “I forgive him but it wasn’t acceptable. If it comes up we talk about it like we are talking about it now. I haven’t got the anger I did at the time... Life goes on and I’ve moved on.”
2018: Another arrest
Almost a year after the birth of the couple’s fourth son, Cass, Wayne is arrested at a Virginia airport for public intoxication and swearing. He was released on bail and, a few months later, is pictured partying late into the night in Florida with a female bartender over Super Bowl weekend.
2019 - 2021: Partying, partying, partying
In August 2019, the footballer is pictured entering a hotel lift with an unknown woman at 5.30am after reportedly partying for seven hours with his DC United teammates. MailOnline claimed that Coleen demanded her husband return to the UK after seeing the images and removed her wedding ring.
Two years later, after retiring from playing professionally in January, images taken by 21-year-old influencer Tayler Ryan and friends showed Wayne asleep in a hotel room after a night out. In an apology, the Derby manager says it was a “mistake”. “I went to a private party with two of my friends. From me, I would like to apologise to my family and the club for the images which were going round.”
2022 and 2023: His and hers documentaries
Following the Wagatha Christie saga, both Coleen and Wayne released their respective documentaries. Rooney was released in 2022 and covered the footballer’s life, career and scandals. “Alcohol is a lot to blame and still is,” Coleen said of his past behaviour. “It’s not a good thing for Wayne to be unsupervised.”
Coleen’s Disney Plus series – titled Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story – tells the story of the sleuthing and fallout which led to the iconic case, and touches on the couple’s rollercoaster marriage. Her husband – who was a witness during the trial – also features in the series. When called to the stand, he said Coleen had “become a different mother and a different wife” during the saga, which is set to continue as Rebekah Vardy recently launched an appeal in the latest stage of the libel battle.
