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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Entertainment
Amy Francombe

Meet Cute: Celebrities who ended up dating their famous crushes

After a video of Emily Ratajkowski and Harry Styles sloppily snogging in Tokyo went viral on Saturday, we can wholeheartedly say that the two are living their best lives. Ratajkowski for dating a new ultra-dreamy heartthrob every other week (she had launched her situationship with comedian Eric Andre on Valentine’s Day after dating Pete Davidson for a few weeks), and Styles for finally snogging his celebrity crush.

(ES Composite)

The borderline cringe PDA between the supermodel turned author turned podcaster and the Grammy Award-winning artist was immediately memed, with social media shuddering at the mouth wide open, OTT smooch.

However, internet sleuths found a resurfaced video from eight years ago where the former One Direction member was asked if he had a “celebrity crush”.

“Emily Ratajkowski,” Styles responded coyly, adorably mispronouncing her surname. Many are also congratulating the As It Was singer for manifesting a curbside make-out session with his famous infatuation.

It’s not the first time an A-lister has ended up with someone famous they openly fancied…

Justin and Hailey Bieber

(AFP via Getty Images)

Long before she was Mrs Bieber, the Rhode skincare founder was a belieber. In fact, she was first introduced to her future husband in 2009 when her father, Stephen Baldwin, dragged the teenager to a taping of NBC’s Today show that Bieber was appearing on.

The two were first photographed together alongside Stephen Baldwin at the premiere of the singer’s 2011 movie Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, with fans unearthing tweets including "OMG! I need Bieber wrapping paper ASAP." And "Oh hey @justinbieber waddup doeee...?" from Hailey in 2012.

To be fair, we were probably all Beliebers in 2012, which the model also explained in her Vogue 2019 cover story. “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.”

After dating non-exclusively for a few years, the pair got married in 2018 at a courthouse. They had a formal ceremony the following year, with the Intentions singer even joking about his wife’s childhood crush on him in 2019, posting a photo of the model on his Instagram story and writing: "People always asked me if I’d marry a Belieber, well I did!!!"

Victoria and David Beckham

(PA Archive)

While answering quickfire questions on Ellen DeGeneres, the former Spice Girls member admitted that David Beckham was her first celebrity crush. “It’s about creative visualisation,” the clothing designer told DeGeneres on her eponymous show in November 2019, to which DeGeneres replied: “Wow, that’s fantastic that you married your first crush.”

The feelings were apparently mutual, with the footballer reportedly telling his friends after spotting Victoria in a Spice Girls music video: “That one there, that’s the girl I’m going to marry.” But he was too shy to reach out.

However, the pair met IRL during a football match in 1997, with the fashion mogul describing it as, "love at first sight does exist," to British Vogue. "It will happen to you in the Manchester United players’ lounge — although you will get a little drunk, so exact details are hazy.”

The couple got married two years later and have been together for more than two decades, during which they have had four kids: Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz, and Harper.

Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa

(Getty Images)

During an appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden in 2017, the Aquaman lead said: "Ever since I was like, eight years old and I saw [Lisa] on the TV, I was like, ‘Mommy, I want that one,’" referring to Bonet’s role as Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show. “Like, ‘I’m going to stalk you for the rest of my life and I’m going to get you.’”

In a 2019 interview with Esquire, he confirmed that Bonet was “literally my childhood crush” and added that he didn’t tell her about his somewhat “creepy stalkerish behaviour” until after they had kids.

The pair apparently met in a jazz club in the early 2000s and started dating in 2005, before quietly marrying in 2017. They had two children, Lola and Nakoa-Wolf, before announcing their shock separation on Instagram in January 2022.

Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson

(Ariana Grande/Instagram)

It’s the relationship that helped to put Pete Davidson on the unlikely heartthrob map, with the Saturday Night Live host since going on to date bombshells such as Kim Kardashian, Bridgeton star Phoebe Dynevor and, of course, Emily Ratajkowski.

Grande and Davidson met when she hosted and performed on SNL back in March 2016. "I had the biggest crush on him the whole time. Like, for ever. Like, my friends used to make fun of me for all that stuff," she told Jimmy Fallon in August 2018, a couple of months after they announced they were officially dating. She also joked that she told her manager after first meeting him that she would “marry him 100 per cent”, which was timely considering the pair went on to get engaged a couple of months later.

Davidson was apparently also interested in Grande when they met on SNL, telling Variety that he "was obviously ogling and trying not to be creepy.” Unfortunately, the pair called things off, but not before the pop star tweeted revealing comments about his now infamous penis size.

Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox

(Getty Images for Universal Music)

Of course, the face of cringe celebrity couples and over-the-top PDA would have been obsessed with one another long before making things official.

Machine Gun Kelly and Fox met in 2020 while filming the movie Midnight in the Switchgrass in Puerto Rico. However, according to Machine Gun Kelly’s 2021 GQ cover story, he had a photo of the movie star in his childhood bedroom.

"So that’s some full-circle shit,” he continued. Since then, they’ve revealed their sickening pet names for each other — which include “rehab Barbie”, “Buddha” and “booby” — worn pinky nail chains on the red carpet and viles of each other’s blood around their necks.

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez

(Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

In 2019, the former baseball player was shown a video of himself from 1998 while appearing on the The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In it, a reporter asked Rodriguez about his dream date, to which he immediately responded, “Jennifer Lopez”.

“That means that dreams actually do come true in America,” Rodriguez joked to Fallon. “It took me 20 years.”

The pair started dating in 2017 and got engaged in March 2019 with a ring worth more than $1 million (£810,000). Unfortunately, they called off the engagement, with a source telling People magazine that Lopez “couldn’t fully trust him”.

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