Culture

The Seal and Heidi Klum Divorce: A Timeline

Milestone moments in the possibly-doomed marriage of celebrity power-duo Heidi Klum and Seal.

By Seth Abramovitch
This article is from the archive of our partner .

Disheartening news out of Hollywood today as TMZ reports that venerable celebrity power-duo Heidi Klum and Seal are on the verge of splitting up, with the Project Runway host set to file divorce papers "as early as next week." However, a conflicting report in Us Weekly cites a "close" friend who says "nothing is finalized...They've had a very rough road lately. They're either madly in love or having crazy fights."

In the hope of making some sense of the impending wreckage, we present this timeline of milestone moments in their possibly-doomed marriage:

  • 2003: Klum first meets the singer in a hotel lobby. She'd later tell Oprah Winfrey it was the formidable contents of his bicycle shorts that first caught her attention:
"I met him in a hotel lobby in New York City and he came in just from the gym and I was sitting there and I was, like, wow," Klum tells Oprah Winfrey on her show's Superstar Couples episode.

Wow, as in Seal was wearing bicycle shorts.

"And I pretty much saw everything," says Klum. "The whole package."
  • 2004: Two days before Christmas, Seal proposes to Klum inside a quinzhee he erected himself in Whistler, British Columbia. Extra points if you know what a quinzhee is, and how it differs fundamentally from your garden-variety igloo. (Answer here.)
  • 2005-2009: The couple begin to grow their family, conceiving and delivering Henry Günther Adeola Dashtu Samuel in 2005, Johan Riley Fyodor Taiwo Samuel in 2006 and Lou Sulola Samuel in 2009. Yes, Fyodor Taiwo.
  • 2009: Klum has her name legally changed to Heidi Samuel, Seal's surname. Everyone keeps calling her Heidi Klum anyway.
  • 2010: The couple announces plans for a reality show on Lifetime. Love's Divine was to "help inspire other couples to share special moments." It never makes it to air.
  • October 2011: Klum arrives at her annual Halloween party in a series of increasingly demented costumes, culminating last year in the model being wheeled in by gurney dressed as a skinned human being. A grisly metaphor for feelings of profound injury and vulnerability? Perhaps.
  • February 2011: Klum praises Seal's parenting skills and "infinite amounts of love" in The Independent.
  • December 2011: Klum tweets the last known photo of the couple looking happy together, taken on a snowy mountaintop. Its smiles would mask an ocean of pain.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.