Fergie & Josh Duhamel Separate After 8 Years Of Marriage

Fergie, 42 and husband Josh Duhamel, 44, have decided to split up after being married for eight years.

FERGIE & JOSH DUHAMEL SPLIT

“With absolute love and respect we decided to separate as a couple earlier this year,” Fergie’s rep said Thursday. “To give our family the best opportunity to adjust, we wanted to keep this a private matter before sharing it with the public. We are and will always be united in our support of each other and our family.”

The couple first met when the Black Eyed Peas made an appearance on his show Las Vegas, and he used the simple pick-up line, “you’re hot” to get her attention. “It sounds corny when you say it, but I think she knew I was sort of saying it tongue-in-cheek because she had already known that I had a little bit of a crush on her while she was there and it was sort of a way of saying something she already knew,” he later explained.

The couple, who share a four-year-old son, Axl Jack, haven’t been spotted out together in public since June. They both wished each other a happy eight-year anniversary on Instagram back in January. “8 Years!! Love you babe,” Duhamel wrote, while Fergie simply said, “Happy 8th anniversary to my bae.”

He also wished her a happy birthday in March, while she wished him a happy Father’s Day in June. Rumors of cheating have been swirling Duhamel for years, when it was alleged that he slept with a stripper in 2009. “When you go through difficult times it – it really makes you stronger as a unit, as a partnership,” Fergie told Oprah after the fact. “It does for us anyways. Our love today is a deeper love.”

In June, he said of Fergie: “We really, really like each other and like spending time around each other. We’ve been through so much together that it’s just a whole different level from what it was before. I think at the end of the day we just like each other. We obviously love each other, but I think it’s very important that we really like each other too.”