If you ever needed an example of dreams coming true, take one look at Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin).
Fourteen long years ago, along with the rest of the world, Baldwin was a Belieber, shipping the pop star and his girlfriend Selena Gomez.
Fast-track to more than a decade later and the model is married to her dream man, raising three adorable pets together in Bieber’s homeland, Canada. Jealous, us? Here’s a look at how Baldwin became the First Lady of Pop.
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2009: Backstage at the Today Show, actor Stephen Baldwin introduces his daughter Hailey, who was then 12, to her crush, Bieber, 15. The pair smiled politely at each other, with Hailey not even bothering to unfold her arms. In a word: awkward.
2011: Two years later, they reunite on the red carpet at the premiere of Bieber’s movie, Never Say Never. Though Baldwin later says she was “never a superfan of him”, she admits she thought he was cute. “Everybody had a crush on him – but for the first few years we had a weird age gap,” she told Vogue.
September 2011: Bieber and Selena Gomez become the It-couple, and Baldwin stans for her man, tweeting, “I don’t care what anyone says, but Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez together is the definition of a teenage dream! #word.” Baldwin continues to slide into Bieber’s Twitter feed up until 2014, when Jelena was no more.
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November 2014: By this stage, Baldwin wriggles her way into the social scene, befriending Kendall Jenner, who was friends with Biebs. The trio are spotted at Hillsong Church in New York City, sparking dating rumours. A month later, Baldwin shuts down the gossip, telling E! News, “I’ve known him since I was so young… We’ve always just been good friends over the years.”
December 2014: After a string of dinners in New York, Bieber and Baldwin escape to the Turks and Caicos for New Year’s Eve with friends. This time, Biebs is on the defence about their relationship, writing on Instagram alongside a picture of the pair, “People are crazy. I’m super single and this is my good friend u would know otherwise.”
July 2015: The pair get matching “G” tattoos as a tribute to Pastor Chad Veach’s daughter, Georgia, who is battling a rare condition called Lissencephaly.
December 2015: Baldwin joins Bieber on family vacation in Anguilla to celebrate the new year, documenting their time together on Instagram.
January 2016: Their first kiss! The pair confirm their relationship with a picture on Instagram.
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February 2016: Despite the PDA, Baldwin reveals they’re “not an exclusive couple”, claiming the muso’s tour was a priority. “Relationships at this age are already complicated, but I don’t really like to talk about it because it’s between me and him,” the model tells E! News.
That same month, in an interview with GQ, Bieber admits he was scared to make things official. “I know that in the past I’ve hurt people and said things that I didn’t mean to make them happy in the moment. So now I’m just more so looking at the future, making sure I’m not damaging them. What if Hailey ends up being the girl I’m gonna marry, right?”
August 2016: It was so casual, it was over. Biebs moves on with Sofia Richie in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fling that ends a month later. Biebs and Baldwin unfollow each other on Instagram, and spend more than a year apart seeing other people.
November 2017: After two years apart, Jelena is back on! Gomez and Bieber rekindle their flame and flaunt their relationship for the world to see, but by March 2018, it’s over… again.
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June 2018: Baldwin and Bieber find their way back to each other, and are pictured smooching around New York City over the coming months. Baldwin tells Vogue they reconnected at a church conference in Miami. “The common denominator, I promise you, is always church,” she says. “By then we were past the drama. I just gave him a hug. By the end of the conference, he was like, ‘We’re not going to be friends.’ I was like, ‘We’re not?'”
July 7, 2018: Bieber, 24, proposes to Baldwin, 21, in the Bahamas with a $883,000 eight-carat ring, confirming the engagement two days later on Instagram. “Was gonna wait a while to say anything but word travels fast, listen plain and simple Hailey I am soooo in love with everything about you!” he writes. “So committed to spending my life getting to know every single part of you loving you patiently and kindly.”
September 13, 2018: Two months after their engagement, the pair tie the knot at a New York courthouse.
November 2018: Bieber confirms they’re married, referring to the model as “my wife”. The pair become Instagram official, with Baldwin changing her name to Hailey Bieber.
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February 2019: The Biebers appear in their first magazine shoot together for Vogue, giving the publication an insight into their romance. “When I saw her last June, I just forgot how much I loved her and how much I missed her and how much of a positive impact she made on my life,” the pop king says of his decision to propose so soon. “I was like, ‘Holy cow, this is what I’ve been looking for.”
September 30, 2019: Introducing Mr and Mrs Bieber! Hailey and Justin get hitched for a second time in a Christian ceremony in South Carolina, inviting their friends and family to celebrate.
September 28, 2019: Almost three years after the Biebers tied the knot in front of their family and friends, Baldwin appears on Alexandra Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast and addresses the long-standing claims she “stole” Bieber from Gomez.
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“Were you ever with Justin romantically at the same time as [Gomez]?” Cooper asked Baldwin, to which she replied, “No. Not one time. Let’s just put it this way. When him [sic] and I started like, hooking up or like anything of that sort, he was not ever in a relationship. Ever, at any point.”
“I would never – it’s not my character to mess with someone’s relationship. I would just never do that. I was raised better than that,” she added.
Baldwin also acknowledged the long-standing criticism she’s received from Bieber and Gomez’s fans that take issue with the “timeline” of her relationship with Bieber – Baldwin has previously pleaded with trolls to “leave her alone” – and that neither Bieber nor Gomez have done anything to put an end to the bullying.
“What I will say is that she has been in this industry much longer than I have and maybe there’s something that she knows about like it wouldn’t fix anything,” Baldwin said of Gomez. “She doesn’t owe me anything. Neither of us owe anybody anything except respect. I respect her, a lot.”
Baldwin also said she and Gomez had spoken since her wedding to Bieber, and that it was “all love” between them.
October 15, 2022: It’s all love between Gomez and Baldwin, indeed. The duo cosied up at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ second annual gala, and were photographed embracing at the event.
Days later, a source told ET the duo posed for those photographs because they wanted to show “there’s no beef or bad feelings between them anymore.”
“Selena and Hailey were both super chill together at the Academy Museum Gala. They’ve both moved on and are happy in their own lives,” the source told the publication.
According to the source, Bieber is “happy” the trio can move past the perceived feud.
The source said: “Justin is very happy with the fact that they can all move on and that it can be peaceful between everyone.”
Here’s the latest on Gomez and Baldwin’s alleged ‘feud’.
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