ON Tuesday, the music world’s biggest celebrity couple, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, will celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary.
But there are many, including Mr and Mrs Carter themselves, who believed their relationship would never survive this long.
The sweet, shy, church-going girl from Texas and the tough street kid from Brooklyn have been through the worst of times – coming within inches of ending their marriage, their business and their billion-dollar brand.
And we know this (just like we know about their very passionate sex life), because at every step they have told us exactly what is going on via their music.
The couple first met back in 2000 at an MTV event in Cancún, Mexico, when Beyoncé was an 18-year-old singer in the girl band Destiny’s Child and Jay-Z was a 30-year-old platinum-album-selling rapper and producer.
He sat next to her on the plane (he tells the story in his 2018 song 713), and within a few years they would become the world’s ultimate It couple.
Together they have a combined 56 Grammys and more than 300 million record sales. Their friendship circle includes the Obamas, Chris Martin and Oprah Winfrey, and their joint net worth is estimated to be around £2billion.
Now 41, Beyoncé is an international icon, while 53-year-old Jay-Z is one of the most successful and influential musicians of all time.
She herself told me, when I interviewed her in 2011, that it hasn’t been an easy ride. “I like a simple life,” she said, three years after they married at their Manhattan penthouse, surrounded by friends, family and 70,000 white orchids.
“I took time out last year because it was important for me to spend time with my man. I got to be a wife, I got to cook for my man – I can do good things with oxtail and I had one year of keeping everything simple, which is a massive thing for me.
“It gets complicated. It may look easy, but none of it is easy – life, career, marriage… it all takes so much.”
It certainly does. In a decade and a half of their dazzling success story, they have also faced rumours of his multiple indiscretions and his public admission of an affair.
She has gone through several heartbreaking miscarriages before becoming a mother to their three children, Blue Ivy, 11, and five-year-old twins Rumi and Sir.
There have been family rifts, years of therapy and a vow renewal 10 years after they first tied the knot.
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of this uber-couple’s relationship is the fact that, on the surface, things are kept extremely private, with a smiling united front.
But when it comes to their music, all their dirty washing is hung out to dry in eye-wateringly honest lyrics.
Take, for example, that infamous elevator incident following a Met Ball after-party back in 2014.
CCTV footage released showed Beyoncé’s furious sister Solange kicking and punching Jay-Z, while the superstar herself stood calmly back, watching as the events unfolded.
As the rumour mill went into overdrive with stories surfacing of Jay-Z’s indiscretions with other women, from Rihanna to Rita Ora and the fashion designer Rachel Roy (all have denied any involvement), the couple then made it their business to be seen together at sports events, and the sisters posted happy family photos of each other on social media.
A joint statement was released with the message: “The most important thing is that our family has worked through it.
“They both have apologised to each other and we have moved forward as a united family. At the end of the day, families have problems and we’re no different. We love each other and above all we are family.”
Bey and Jay made it clear to the world that this scandal was not going to destroy their seemingly perfect world, with the singer smiling her way through speculation of his affairs.
Yet, just one month later, when the couple began their On The Run tour, Beyoncé pointedly changed some of her lyrics, letting her fans know she had not let her husband get away with anything, and she knew exactly who he’d been cheating with.
On her track Resentment, the words: “I’ll always remember feeling like I was no good/Like I couldn’t do it for you like your mistress could,” became “I’ll always remember feeling like I was no good/Like I couldn’t do it for you like that wack bitch could.”
And: “Been ridin’ with you for six years/I gotta look at her in her eyes and see she’s had half of me,” became: “Been ridin’ with you for 12 years/I gotta look at her in her eyes and see she’s had half of me. She ain’t even half of me. That bitch will never be.”
In front of her man and in front of her fans as her onstage persona Sasha Fierce, she let her music do the talking, publicly throwing blows at Jay-Z and the other woman with far more impact than her sister ever did.
As one former employee at her record company admits: “The way Beyoncé and Jay-Z conduct their relationship is borderline genius.
“They rarely say anything in public when things are happening, but once they work things through with music, they put it out there and this is what makes their music and their brand so special, because they let their fans in on their innermost lives.
“They tell the real story of their relationship through their music,” they explain. “It’s pure music therapy and it works for both of them – and their fans. But it also gives them control.
“They say what they want to say when they are ready to reveal what has been going on.
“To the public eye, Beyoncé – particularly in the early days – seemed like the woman who just smiled and put up with things, but then you listen to her music and it’s all there. She’s a strong woman, she’s the boss, she demands respect, but she also fights for this one man she believes in.”
In 2016, with the release of Beyoncé’s critically acclaimed album Lemonade, the story behind the elevator was made clear as the album contained several thinly veiled references to Jay-Z’s cheating, such as: “You can taste the dishonesty/It’s all over your breath as you pass it off so cavalier.”
A mention of the mysterious “Becky with the good hair” revived the Rihanna-Rita-Rachel rumours.
Beyoncé had neither forgiven nor forgotten. A year later, Jay-Z apologised to his wife and daughter on the title track of his album 4:44 – his response to Lemonade.
“What good is a ménage à trois when you have a soulmate?/You risked that for Blue?” he raps.
In 2017, he told the NY Times: “We were using our art almost like a therapy session. We did the hard work of going to therapy,” Jay-Z explained.
Then, a year later, he reflected in an interview with David Letterman that: “It was my way of saying I want to cry, I want to be open, I want to have the emotional tools that it takes to keep my family together.
“We love each other, so we really put in the work for years.”
And it obviously worked – the pair went on to renew their vows in June 2018, with Beyoncé rocking an exquisite Galia Lahav dress.
In order to understand the real reason why these two unlikely individuals have become so rock-solid, with an untouchable global brand, we need to go right back to that flight in 2000.
Jay-Z was the bad boy of rap at 30, brought up by single mother Gloria in the projects of Brooklyn, after his father Adnis Reeves abandoned him and his three siblings when he was just 11 years old.
Born Shawn Corey Carter, he began selling crack cocaine and having regular run-ins with the police as a teenager, until, at 15, his talent for music made him part of the underground rap scene.
After repeated rejection by other record labels, he set up his own, Roc-A-Fella Records, and fast became a major player in the industry.
Meanwhile, at 18, Beyoncé was the good girl of pop, fiercely protected by her manager dad Mathew and beloved mum Tina. In person, she was everything Jay-Z wasn’t, but musically he was everything she wanted to be.
The former record company employee says: “He was smart enough to know she was different from all the other women he hung out with. He had to slow down, gain her trust and respect. There was chemistry from the first moment, but this was always going to have to be a slow burn.”
They became friends. In 2002, in their first musical collaboration, she appeared on his hit record ’03 Bonnie & Clyde.
At the time, she was the most prominent member of Destiny’s Child and preparing for her solo career. Over the next two years, flirting ensued through professional collaborations and dates around the world.
On Crazy In Love, the first track released from her 2003 debut solo album, Dangerously In Love, Jay-Z is featured. In Signs, also from that album, she sings about loving a Sagittarius man – which is his star sign.
The following year, the pair arrived together at the MTV Music Awards, dressed in coordinating outfits – and the union was official.
At the time, there were many in the business who feared pop’s new golden girl had walked blindly into a Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown situation, and that Jay-Z would destroy her.
But those who delved deeper into their past knew this was never going to happen. The former record company employee explains: “It is absolutely true that Beyoncé was young, shy and he was the streetwise hustler. She played that game.
He played that game, but the real strength lay in two places. With Beyoncé and with the music.
“Beyoncé grew up in a loving family that was ripped apart when her own father had an affair [after a 31-year marriage, Tina and Mathew Knowles finalised their divorce in 2011 after he fathered a love child in 2009], but Jay-Z never really knew family stability. It was what he craved.
“It just took him to realise that cheating was about weakness and that making it work was about strength.”
And Beyoncé said to Oprah in 2013: “I would not be the woman I am if I did not go home to that man. He has helped me on so many levels. Just to have someone that you just like is so important. And someone that is honest.”
The cornerstone of their billion-dollar brand is undoubtedly their talent as well as Jay-Z’s shrewd business acumen, but at its heart is a couple who fell in love and have fought against the odds to turn their relationship into something solid and lasting, and to present a united family to the world.
When asked about Solange, he told Rap Radar in 2017: “We’ve always had a great relationship. We’ve had one disagreement. Before and after, we’ve been cool,” before adding: “That’s my sister. Not my sister-in-law, no, my sister.”
As they celebrate their 15th anniversary (she once told me the greatest thing he does for her is bring her butter-pecan ice cream in bed), their matching IV tattoos will still be intact.
A reminder not only of their lucky number, but also the day and month they married, as well as their birthdays (September 4 for Bey, December 4 for Jay). It is a symbol of their love.
It will also be a triumph for those who believe true love is worth holding on to.
As Jay-Z said on CNN in 2018: “For us, we chose to fight for our love, for our family, to give our kids a different outcome, to break that cycle for black men and women. The best apology is changed behaviour.”
Happy anniversary, Bey and Jay!
