Gwyneth Paltrow Chris Martin - H 2014
AP ImagesGwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin are separating.
The couple, who have been married since 2003 and have two children, announced their separation on Paltrow’s lifestyle website, Goop, on Tuesday in a post titled “Conscious Uncoupling.”
“It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate,” Paltrow, 41, and Martin, 37, began their letter. “We have been working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us, and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate.”
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“We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been,” the letter continued. “We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time.”
“We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner,” the pair ended the letter, with a photograph of a smiling Paltrow and Martin below.
Paltrow and Martin met in 2002 while Coldplay was on its world tour in promotion of A Rush of Blood to the Head. Several songs, including the ballad “Fix You” from 2005’s X&Y, were written specifically for Paltrow following her father’s death. The couple married on Dec. 5, 2003, at the Santa Barbara County clerk’s office without friends and family present, months before Paltrow gave birth to their first child, daughter Apple, now 9, in May the following year in London. Their second child, son Moses, now 7, was born April 2006 in New York.
As recently as mid-January, Paltrow and Martin were seen attending Sean Penn‘s Help for Haiti gala in Beverly Hills. In an interview with Glamour U.K. last summer, “It’s hard being married. You go through great times, you go through terrible times. We’re the same as any couple.”
News of the split comes as Martin and his Coldplay bandmates ramp up their publicity tour for the sixth studio album, Atlantic/Parlophone’s Ghost Stories, out May 19. The band took over a giant sound stage at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City over the weekend for three intimate shows to preview songs from the upcoming disc.
A rep for Paltrow declined further comment.
