He’s on The Voice, She’s a Major Voice on Twitter! Find Out What Makes John Legend & Chrissy Teigen’s Marriage Work
The 42-year-old Legend and his wife, Chrissy Teigen, have been one of the most dynamic couples in Hollywood for some time now. How have they made things work for seven years of wedded bliss? “We actually really love and respect and admire each other. I think that’s the foundation of who we are as a couple and we actually enjoy each other’s company,” Legend shared in 2019.”
Of course, like any couple, they’ve had their share of curveballs along the way Keep reading to find out how more about John Legend and Chrissy Teigen’s marriage, including how an initial hookup turned into the love of a lifetime, why they once broke up for an entire half-hour, the hardships they’ve had to deal with—and why KanyeWest is one reason their children have a different last name than they do.
Who is John Legend’s wife?
Legend is married to model, TV personality and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen. For such a glamorous celeb, she was born in a decidedly unglamorous place: Delta, Utah. Her parents, Ron (whom Teigen has called a “fishing vest-wearing hunk of man meat!”) and Vilailuck (“Pepper,” who now lives with Legend and her daughter), had met in Thailand. There, Pepper was a single mom with a daughter (Teigen’s older sister, Tina). They fell in love, and Ron, an electrician, brought Pepper and Tina to America. They were in Utah when Teigen was born, but the family moved around a lot, finding themselves in places like Snohomish, Washington where Ron and Pepper ran a tavern called “Porky’s.”
When Teigen was 15, Pepper returned to Thailand to care for her ailing father; both he and Teigen’s grandmother passed away while she was there. Pepper didn’t return to the U.S. for some time, which caused friction in the family; sometimes the Teigen girls didn’t even want to talk to her on the phone (don’t worry, mom later came back!). While still in high school, the family moved to Huntington Beach, California, where Teigen promptly dyed her hair black and shaved her eyebrows.
Teigen didn’t set out to be a model: she was discovered at 18 while working at a surf shop in California. A photographer came in and asked to take pictures of her; her co-workers and dad were skeptical, and Ron even went with her to the beach shoot. But it worked out; she eventually landed a Billabong campaign and started modeling professionally.
Teigen made her professional showbiz debut as a suitcase model on the game show Deal or No Deal (alongside Meghan Markle!) and her career moved fast from there. In 2010, Teigen was named “Rookie of the Year” by Sports Illustrated, and four years later, they put her on the 50th anniversary cover with Nina Agdal and Lily Aldridge. (She later claimed that she only got that cover because she happened to already be in New Zealand, where the cover was shot, for another gig.) She kept doing the Swimsuit Issue of the magazine, even after giving birth. She’s also appeared on the covers of Vogue, Glamour, Elle, People and many other magazines, and worked the runways for labels like Ed Hardy, True Religion and more.
One modeling gig she didn’t get? The Victoria’s Secret’s Angel campaign. While she did catalog work for the brand and “backside modeling” for the website (“no face involved, just butt”) she was never an Angel. In true Teigen style, she’s made light of it. “Can someone Photoshop me into this?” she asked about a photo showing the Angels before their show in 2017.
Modeling isn’t all the pretty woman does, however. She’s leveraged her feisty, chatty personality into a co-hosting gig on Lip Sync Battle and she’s even presided over her own court on Quibi, in a show called, appropriately, Chrissy’s Court. She can also cook up a storm; she’s written two Cravings cookbooks and is turning Cravings into a food empire with cookware and other merch.
Teigen is also well known these days for her substantial Twitter presence; with over 12 million followers, at one point she was even dubbed “Mayor of Twitter.” But she’s also weathered some serious social media turmoil: non-binary model and reality star CourtneyStodden, who came to fame at 16 years old when they married 50-year-old actor DougHutchison, said Teigen bullied them as a teen. She “wouldn’t just publicly tweet about wanting me to take ‘a dirt nap’ but would privately DM me and tell me to kill myself. Things like, ‘I can’t wait for you to die,'” they said.
Teigen apologized publicly on Twitter in May. The next month, Teigen acknowledged in an essay on the platform Medium that “there are others—and more than just a few—who I need to say I’m sorry to.” The controversy caused Teigen to lose partnerships at Target, Bloomingdale’s and Macys, and lately, she’s been considerably less active on Twitter.
Throughout the bullying scandal, Legend supported his wife. He quote-tweeted her Medium essay, highlighting the quote, “We’re all better than our worst moments.” In June 2021, he told TMZ that his wife was doing “just great” and called out another bullying accuser for fabricating direct messages with her. When asked how supportive Legend had been during the scandal, Teigen said “He’s been everything.”
How did John Legend meet Chrissy Teigen?
It wasn’t a true love connection when Teigen met Legend on the set of his steamy “Stereo” music video in 2006, but there was definitely an initial attraction. “Please don’t look it up on YouTube!” Teigen pleaded with Cosmopolitan in 2014. “I was doing this fake model-y dancing with the most dead eyes you’ve ever seen in a human.”
They hooked up when the video was finished. “We did the music video, we were together for like 12 hours,” Teigen later explained in an interview. “We spent the entire day together, me in my underwear and him in a full suit, and I went to go say goodbye to him, to his hotel and we didn’t ever say goodbye that night.”
Now, Legend had a history of iffy relationships before he’d met Teigen. He told Dax Shepard in 2020 that he kept relationships ill-defined so he wasn’t ever technically cheating, but admitted, “I definitely was dishonest and selfish… it was happening before I was famous.”
As for Teigen, she tweeted in 2019 that she didn’t date much in her pre-marriage life; instead, she’d just move in with people. “Like, ‘Hello, I live here now,'” she explained. “That is how John ended up in this situation.”
So how did the two of wind up walking down the aisle? “I’m the kind of person who needs to grow into that feeling,” he’s said. “It was probably a couple of years in when I could already see us being together forever.” The two stayed in touch after their first night together, with Teigen playing it cool and giving him a chance to fall in love. “I was pretending that I didn’t really care, but I wasn’t with anybody else,” she’s said.
The pair finally got together and it went well. Except for the time Legend tried to break things off. For all of 30 minutes. “It wasn’t a typical breakup,” Teigen tweeted in 2017. “He was on tour and his voice hurt and he was being a whiny face about everything and so yeah, I was like ‘no.'”
Legend eventually realized, “You’re happier being faithful and being in love with one person. At a certain point, I just decided that person was Chrissy. I decided I wasn’t gonna mess with anybody else anymore.”
When did John Legend and Chrissy Teigen get married?
After dating for four years, the two married in 2013 in Lake Como, Italy. Footage of their wedding was featured in the music video for Legend’s “All of Me,” a song he wrote for his wife. The video was released just weeks after their wedding.
Teigen, who called herself the “complete anti-bride,” was more than happy to let a wedding planner handle most of the details because of anxiety over the event. According to a friend, she even bought five dresses because she felt guilty about just trying on dresses. ”Those went to great homes,” she assured everyone. Then, on the day of the wedding, the ceremony was delayed for about four hours because of family flight delays. “I wasn’t even aware of it because everyone wanted to keep it a secret from me. They didn’t want to stress me out. So whatever it was, it was a lot,” Teigen said in 2017.
Ultimately, things went well. Teigen wore three Vera Wang creations: a ballgown for her vows, a mermaid-shaped gown for dinner and a red trumpet gown for the reception and dancing. The couple was joined by relatives and friends, including model Brooklyn Decker, Quincy Jones, Kanye West (but not Kim Kardashian) and Stevie Wonder, who sang “Ribbons in the Sky.” Rapper Biz Markiedonned his DJ hat, spinning tunes for the night.
How many children does John Legend have?
Legend and Teigen have two children: Luna Simone Stephens, born in April 2016, and Miles Theodore Stephens, born in May 2018. Both parents dote on their kids, but it hasn’t always been an easy road. Just three months after giving birth to Luna, Teigen was diagnosed with postpartum depression.
“I don’t know why I didn’t realize, as it was so obvious to everyone else! John was there when the doctor gave the diagnosis and, of course, he already knew. I didn’t know it could sneak up so late or that it could happen to someone like me, where I have all the resources. I had nannies and my mom living with us,” Teigen admitted last year.
Meanwhile, Miles was diagnosed soon after his arrival with plagiocephaly or “flat head syndrome.” “Baby Miles getting fitted for a little helmet today for his adorable slightly misshapen head,” Teigen tweeted in 2018. “So if you see pictures, don’t feel bad for him because he’s just fixing his flat and honestly he’s probably gonna be even cuter with it somehow.” She also quipped, “I have been told it’s too late for my head.” Miles wore the helmet for three months, and Teigen celebrated with a “Happy Helmet Free Day!” video in March 2019.
During the lockdown, there was plenty of laughter and music in the house; one memorable moment was when “Chrissy did a wedding for Luna’s stuffed animals and had me sing Selena Gomez’s Hands to Myselfat the request of Luna. And so that was pretty funny,” Legend shared in an interview.
The two call one another terrific parents. “She’s such a great mother. She’s so creative and fun. She’s told me that if her life was different, she might’ve been a preschool teacher,” Legend told Glamour in June 2020. “He is an amazing father for a girl who’s becoming a woman in this day and age,” she said last year.
Related: His ‘Hart’ Is Full! Get to Know Kevin Hart’s 4 Kids and Their Mothers
What happened to John Legend and Chrissy Teigen’s son Jack?
For a while, it seemed like the family would be having a new addition. In 2020, Teigen discovered she was pregnant after her breast implant removal. “I did the routine pregnancy test you do before surgery. It said negative. It was not negative,” Chrissy explained in August 2020, (The kids were enthusiastic supporters of that surgery).
Since both of her children were conceived with IVF, she was surprised to be pregnant for the third time. She found out on June 19, 2020, the day Legend released his album Bigger Love, and the two revealed the news in Legend’s “Wild” music video, released in August 2020. She started to call the baby Jack.
However, in October of that year, Teigen shared the heartbreaking news that pregnancy complications led to a stillbirth. They shared a series of photos online, including one of them holding the baby. The photos were taken at Teigen’s request. “He hated it. I could tell,” Teigen said in an essay on Medium. “It didn’t make sense to him at the time.”
While they grieve for their loss, “I just know that I love my wife, more than ever,” he said in an interview in November 2020. “We’ve been through so many challenges together and they’ve made her stronger, and I know that doesn’t always happen when people go through tragedy.”
Teigen said the two are closer today. “It’s also been so wonderful that we have prevailed and still see each other with so much more love than we could have ever, ever imagined ever in our lives,” she said.
Luna and Miles still talk about their baby brother. “It’s been so beautiful to see my kids, the way they talk about him,” Teigen told Ellen DeGeneres in February. “We’ll be going to the beach or something and they’ll say, ‘Is baby Jack with us right now? Do you think he’s up in the clouds?’ It’s just so beautiful and so sweet.”
Why don’t John Legend’s children have the same last name as him?
You might wonder why both kids have the surname Stephens, unlike either of their parents. That’s because Legend isn’t really John Legend’s last name, either. “The first guy to call me that was J. Ivy. He’s a spoken word artist from Chicago. I met him through Kanye (West),” Legend shared with Jimmy Fallon in March 2021. “And it just caught on with our little group of friends, and then they were like, ‘We should call you John Legend.’ And it just really was in our little circle.”
Then, West referred to the crooner as Legend on a mixtape—giving him the opportunity to build his career as a true “Legend.” Even though he still didn’t have a record deal at that point, he took a leap of faith and took on the new name. Teigen is still Teigen; she kept her birth name after the marriage—and don’t sass her about it. “My husband didn’t even take his last name?” she tweeted in 2018.
What is John Legend’s marriage like after all these years?
Legend and Teigen joke around online and in person, but it’s clear the love between them is deep and that they’re enjoying growing together.
Legend expresses himself through song of course, saying that Teigen is “my end and my beginning” in the song “All of Me.” But even in everyday life, having such a fiery wife makes his days exciting. “She pushes me to be funnier,” he’s said. “Not because she’s trying to, I think it’s just being around her. And to be bolder.”
“The life we have created together is wonderful,” Teigen says. “What John was like when I first met him was very different. It wasn’t just me who grew and changed a lot. It’s like having a teacher. He’s never mad at my questions–he loves to answer them. If I don’t understand something like Brexit, he’s able to put it in the simplest of terms for me to understand.”
Teigen also loves taking care of her husband. “I love cooking for my man. John is very successful, so people sometimes think that I am mooching off him. But we take care of each other in different ways,” Teigen has said. She looks forward to that for years to come
