Things were rocky for Chanel Iman and Sterling Shepard more than one year before news of their split became public.
The New York Giants wide receiver and the model got engaged in 2017 after one year of dating.
“When I was younger, I’d see her in the Victoria’s Secret magazines that my sisters were getting, but it didn’t really come to me. When she walked into the room one of my boys was like, ‘You know who that is?’ and I was like, ‘No,’” Shepard recalled to Haute Living in 2019 about meeting his future spouse in 2016. “I approached her and asked her if she wanted a drink, and we were just talking for the rest of the party, and then we went to some club for the afterparty and kept talking. I got her number, and we went our own separate ways, but we stayed in contact. It was kind of crazy. And now that’s my lady.”
They confirmed their engagement in December 2017 via Instagram.
“The catch of my dreams,” he wrote at the time. “Can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you!”
The duo wasted no time in 2018, walking down the aisle in March and welcoming daughter Cali in August.
“I feel like [Sterling] can be a doctor because he’s really good with being around any situation,” Iman told Us Weekly in June 2018 before she gave birth for the first time. “I’m a little nervous, but he seems to have a lot more confidence in me.”
By December 2019, they were parents of two when Iman gave birth to daughter Cassie.
“It’s honestly tough whenever you put a baby into the situation because you’ve got to still try to find time for each other and a lot of the focus goes onto the baby,” the football player admitted to Us in August 2019 before their second baby girl arrived. “So that’s the main thing is just me trying to carve out a little time in my schedule and her trying to carve out time in her schedule because we’re both pretty busy. That’s the toughest thing about it, but we find a way to get through it.”
In January 2022, Us exclusively reported that the spouses had quietly separated and were in the middle of a divorce in New Jersey. “They are going to try and remain civil and friendly towards each other,” a source told Us at the time.
Scroll through for their relationship timeline:
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