The 9 Most Unexpected Celebrity Couples Who’ve Survived 2018 So Far
Yes, Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson have in lmanaged to drive the media and their millions of fans into a frenzy by not only suddenly splitting from their years-long partners and getting engaged, but doing so within just a matter of weeks. Take a step back, though, and you’ll realize that there’s another imporant factor when it comes to their timing: They did so about halfway through 2018, which, upon reflection, is beginning to look like The Year of the Odd Couple. They may have taken it a step further than most, but at the end of the day, Grande and Davidson are in their mid-twenties, which is to say that they’re still figuring things out—just like, say, Bella Hadid and the Weeknd, Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik, Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin, and pretty much any other It millennial who occasionally dares to act their age. The celebs who are full-grown adults, on the other hand, don’t have any such excuses; even professional bachelor Hugh Grant has done the once unthinkable and gotten hitched this year. Maybe it’s all the Pete and Ariana in the air, but all of the sudden, it seems like 2018 is abounding with unlikely partnerships, whether nascent (Grimes and Elon Musk) or, by some miracle, still enduring. No shade—as long as they’re happy, we wish them the best—but here are all of the couples who’ve truly taken us by surprise so far this year.
We should have known this year of unexpected commitment was coming after 2017 ended with Gwen Stefani telling Giada De Laurentiis that she and Blake Shelton—who became both People’s Sexiest Man Alive and her soulmate seemingly overnight—don’t actually talk to each other much. Instead, they prefer to “just sing like a musical, and everything we sing is like ‘I love you.’ It’s pretty much the whole time like how great we are.” That’s pretty much all they’ve been telling the media over the past year, too—even though they’ve been dating since late 2015. If they’re suddenly genuinely as lovestruck as they seem to be, then best wishes. We just can’t help but shake the idea that something must be off, though, since neither of them has ever once showed a single sign of reluctance when it comes to fawning over the other. Or exhaustion. Or, in fact, anything less than ecstatic enthusiasm. Which is in itself exhausting.
This past May was an eventful one for Ariana Grande and Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson: they both broke off years-long relationships, then announced that they’d already entered into a new one and were dating each other. The weeks since have seen them get engaged; repeatedly assert their commitment to each other via a steady flow of relationship-related tattoos; move in together; and even go rug-shopping. Meanwhile, Grande has been wearing not only the nearly $100,000 diamond engagement ring he gifted her, but also a sweatshirt with his face on it. For his part, Davidson, who’s wont to leave comments like “our love is beautiful” on Grande’s Instagram, posted a gram of his own for her birthday, captioned “happy birthday to the most precious angel on earth! you’re my favorite person that ever existed 🙂 i love you sm.” It’s all just a lot.
As seen here, Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra first drew attention to themselves as a couple at last year’s Met Gala by showing up to the red carpet together—a result, apparently, of both being dressed by and seated with Ralph Lauren. That was easy enough to believe at the time, their differences in age (10 years) and backgrounds (Bollywood and the Disney Channel), but they’ve spent the past month basically making a point to show just how much they’ve been hitting it off, publicly flirting on Instagram (sample comment: “that smile”), introducing each other to their families, and, before long, and making their relationship Instagram official at the end of this June.
Congratulations are in order for Kourtney Karadashian and Younes Bendjima, because honestly, we never thought they’d last this long—or still be having this much fun. The model and former boxer started dating the eldest Kardashian sister late last year, when he was 24, having met when he helped her family out with a bit of translation after Kim Kardashian’s traumatic robbery. Their 13-year age difference might bother Kourtney’s ex, Scott Disick, but the couple seems like they couldn’t care less: over the past few years, they’ve rode camels through the Egyptian desert, managed to take infinity room selfies, and taken mysterious private jets just for the fun of it. (By the way, they’re currently on a family vacation with Kourtney’s three kids in Portofino.) Whatever ends up happening, it looks like they’ll certainly end up considering their relationship fun while it lasted, which seems much more positive than what Sofia Richie will say about things with Disick.
A lot of things go down each year on the red carpet of the Met Gala; P. Diddy, for example, literally laid down on the museum’s stairs in 2017, the same year that saw, as you may recall, Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra pair up, and Jaden Smith choose a handful of his shorn dreadlocks as his date. This year, though, the murmurs were all about the musician Grimes and the billionaire investor-engineer-eccentric Elon Musk arriving arm-in-arm, confirming what no one knew until then: that, after meeting on Twitter, they were officially dating. As if to underline their incongruence, Musk wore a James Bond-like black-and-white tux, while Grimes repped the mall goths, with a head of messy black hair and a pair of platform knee-high boots.
As a mutually beneficial marriage of the former’s reputation, and the latter’s fortune, the attraction between the”Hot Felon” Jeremy Meeks and Topshop heiress Chloe Green makes complete sense. What we didn’t see coming, though, was that their relationship, which began in May of 2017, would escalate to the point of Green giving birth to her first child with Meeks. Good thing that divorce with his ex-wife did end up coming through earlier this year!
Less than two years into dating, Khloé Kardashian and Tristan Thompson already had enough drama go down between them that keeping track of it all required referencing a very helpful timeline. All that, of course, escalated when Thompson was apparently caught cheating on Kardashian, just before she gave birth to their baby, True. Whereas Khloé has made a point to defend their relationship, we’ve only heard a peep or two from Tristan. Whether they’ll keep giving it a go or not, ultimately, Kim has the real say here: she’s made it crystal clear that if he pulls any more moves like blocking her again, it’s over.
It’s been a full year since Ben Affleck, who split with Jennifer Garner after more than a decade of marriage in 2015, started dating the Saturday Night Live producer Lindsay Shookus. (Though there have been plenty of rumors that they’d actually been dating for years, aka during their past marriages, too.) Is their shared loved for iced coffee really that strong? Of course, there could be more than their relationship than that, but if there is, we’ve yet to hear of it. In fact, the most recent news about the couple is that they’re so far spending the summer “they’re enjoying doing normal couple things and exploring L.A. together.”
Listen, Kendall Jenner knows that there’s a good chance you think she’s not exactly interested in men. She’ll also go as far in attempting to dissuade you from that notion by asserting in a magazine cover story that she doesn’t think she has “a bisexual or gay bone in [her] body.” Coming from a member of perhaps the most image-conscious family in the world, though, the lack of seamlessness here, from the apparent lack of romance in her recent relationship with Blake Griffin to her newfound one with another basketball player, Ben Simmons, suggests that something’s amiss. We all know that Kris Jenner reigns supreme over the rumor mill, which has recently been reporting that the pair might not be official, but is indeed “pretty inseparable.” At least one of their recent appearances has told a much less titillating story, however—unless you consider going grocery shopping together a hot date.
