Who's Ed Sheeran's #1 Collab Partner? His Wife, Cherry Seaborn! What We Know About Their Low-Key Marriage
Since releasing his song “The A Team” in 2011, Ed Sheeran has received nothing but rave reviews from critics and fans alike—and presumably, from his adorable wife, Cherry Seaborn. The English-born artist has sold over 100 million singles, with songs like "Perfect," "Shape of You," “Thinking Out Loud” (the United Kingdom’s sixth bestselling song of all time) and “I Don’t Care” (with Justin Bieber) catapulting him to superstar status. He’s now one of the bestselling musical artists in the world.
Even before he became famous (which is actually how long Seaborn has known him), it was clear Sheeran was made for big things. The red-haired, unassuming music star once crashed at Jamie Foxx’s place for about six weeks—and the Oscar-winning actor made him get up on stage to see what he had in him. "I took him down to this show that I was doing, a live night, every Monday in downtown L.A.," Foxx told Graham Norton in 2017. "It was like, 800 Black people! All Black, like, just the best musicians... I mean, the level of the music is here. And I say, 'Ladies and gentleman, Ed Sheeran!' and he pops out [with his little red hair]...and a ukulele!...it was just like a movie. I said, 'Well, let's see what the kid has.'"
What happened? “He got a standing ovation in 12 minutes," Foxx recalled. "And the rest was history!" Taylor Swift knew Sheeran was a star too; she contacted him in 2012 about working together after hearing his work.
Sheeran has also co-written songs for a slew of artists, including One Direction and BTS, and has collaborated with everyone from Beyoncé and Ella Mai to rappers Eminem and Stormzy. It seems like every song he puts out is bigger than the last, and he seems to be gearing up to do it all again. His newest album, - (aka Minus), which features his latest hit song “Eyes Closed,” dropped May 5—and his new documentary The Sum of It All is streaming on Disney+.
Through it all, though, Sheeran's best collab partner is probably his wife. Keep reading to find out more about how Sheeran and Seaborn met as kids, the f-bomb she dropped during Sheeran’s somewhat awkward proposal, and how Sheeran is committed to his wife and family despite the rock star life he lives. Here's what we know about Ed Sheeran's wife, Cherry Seaborn.
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Is Ed Sheeran married?
Yes! Since January 2019, Sheeran has been married to Cherry Seaborn (and yes, that’s her real name), a fellow Brit who grew up with Sheeran. While the singer-songwriter is known for revealing little about his personal life, we do know that he and Seaborn were, in fact, classmates at one point!
What does Ed Sheeran’s wife do?
Seaborn is an “entrepreneur with a genuine concern for the health of the planet—environmentally, socially and economically,” according to her LinkedIn page. She has been employed as a Technology and Digital Risk Manager for Deloitte, a professional services company, but as she notes on LinkedIn, she "took a sabbatical in 2020 from her Advisory role at Deloitte to pursue a series of sustainability projects, educational programs and ventures that play on the application of technology to sustainability." She states that she now "acts as a Tech and Innovation Director for a start-up working to create a sustainability app" and is working on earning a certificate in Sustainable Business.
She’s also played field hockey in both the UK and United States, where she earned her master’s degree in management and business at Duke University.
How old is Ed Sheeran’s wife?
Seaborn was born on May 6, 1992, and just turned 31 as of this writing; Sheeran, who was born on Feb. 17, 1991, is 32 years old as of May 2023.
How did Ed Sheeran and Cherry Seaborn meet?
When Sheeran sings “we were just kids when we fell in love” in the song “Perfect,” he isn’t lying! He tells the world how they met in the video for his song “Put It All on Me (featuring Ella Mai)”: "Back in high school, Ed and Cherry were crushing hard,” reads the text onscreen as the couple dance, kiss and cuddle in sweatshirts. “They made out at the castle on the hill. A few years ago they reconnected, and there were fireworks.”
The two met as students, but soon lost touch and didn’t meet up again until 2015 through a mutual friend. Sheeran had an invite to Taylor Swift’s annual Fourth of July Party, and Seaborn was serendipitously working in New York City at Deloitte at the time. Their first date was that party, and Sheeran later recalled that “something was born on the Fourth of July” in his song with Swift and Future, “Endgame.”
The next day, they went out with Beyoncé and Jay-Z. “It was like the day after we’d had our first date... five of us in a room with Jay-Z and Beyoncé. I gave Beyoncé a J?gerbomb,” he added.
How did Ed Sheeran propose to Cherry Seaborn?
For Seaborn, it wasn’t important to be married, as her own parents had been together decades without a formal marriage—but after a couple of years, Sheeran wanted to make things official. He decided to propose, although it went a bit awkwardly at first. He kept asking Seaborn if she wanted to go for a walk; she didn’t. That was a problem, he revealed in an October 2021 TV interview. “Time was ticking and [I had engraved] the date on the ring and I'm like, 'I've got to do it today!'" he recalled. "It gets to like, 9 p.m. and I'm like, 'For f--k’s sake.'"
"I was like, 'Will you marry me?' And she was like, 'Are you f---ing joking?' I remember it was just a long silence and I just went, 'Please?'" he recalled. “It's such a huge life decision that someone has to make in the blink of an eye. Thankfully she did say yes and that was good."
In January 2018, Sheeran shared a picture of himself and Seaborn and wrote alongside that he “got myself a fiancé just before new year,” adding, “We are very happy and in love, and our cats are chuffed as well.”
When did Ed Sheeran and Cherry Seaborn get married?
The two tied the knot in a tiny ceremony in January 2019. The wedding was attended by about 40 people, including “Ed’s oldest school pals, limited family and the priest,” according to a source. Sheeran remembered later, “We did it at night, on a random day in the middle of January in, like, the middle of nowhere. And basically nobody knew, no one came, we lit candles, got married, we went back and [ate] a curry [made by Seaborn’s dad], and that was it.” He also shared that he’d made “a playlist the night before and we had a dance and then we were probably in bed by like, midnight."
In September of that same year, the couple held a much bigger event in a red circus tent, a festival-style party that was reportedly attended by the likes of Sam Smith, Stella McCartney, Jennifer Aniston, Elton John and Princess Eugenie. It was “celebration for us and our friends,” Sheeran shared. “I’m less private about it. I just didn’t want pictures getting out… I was amazed they didn’t.”
The couple is intensely private about their personal life, not even publicly sharing that they were married for a while. However, Sheeran spilled the beans when he realized he’d mentioned “my wife” in the song “Remember the Name” (his tune with Eminem and 50 Cent on his No.6 Collaborations Project album). “I knew that we’d be married by the point that the song came out,” he told Charlemagne Tha God in 2019. He said that "someone’s gonna hear that and be like, ‘Oh, they’re married!’” The news broke the day the album was released.
Does Ed Sheeran have children?
Yes. Ed Sheeran and Cherry Seaborn have two children.
On Sept. 1, 2020, Sheeran shared on Instagram that he and Seaborn had welcomed a baby daughter the week before, the first child for both. Her name? Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran. “We are completely in love with her. Both mum and baby are doing amazing and we are on cloud nine over here,” Sheeran posted on Instagram, showing off a baby blanket and tiny pair of socks.
Sheeran said he’s learned two things since becoming a dad. First, “the relationship that I had with my parents has completely changed from like, it was amazing before, but now it's just like there's this eternal gratefulness and respect of being like, I know what they went through and I'm still kind of like, going through it,” he told PEOPLE in June 2021. Second? “No one knows what they're doing. I see people, I'm like, 'Oh my God, that guy's the best dad in the world. But he started off like me, like not knowing anything. I'm learning day by day. So, I think it's amazing."
In May 2022, Sheeran and Seaborn welcomed a second baby girl, Jupiter. They posted a photo of her cute little socks on Instagram, writing, "Want to let you all know we’ve had another beautiful baby girl. We are both so in love with her, and over the moon to be a family of 4 x."
Why did Ed Sheeran call his daughter Lyra Antarctica?
Sheeran and Seaborn "just wanted to give her a name that was unique, so that she would be the only one,” he revealed to PEOPLE in the same interview. However, he also admitted that the popularity of the trilogy His Dark Materials (“the greatest love story in the world,” according to Sheeran), in which the heroine’s name is Lyra, might make for more Lyras in the world.
Why Antarctica? “When the tour finished, I've basically toured every single continent but I've never been to Antarctica so that was always on our list," Sheeran shared. "So we went down there in 2019 and it was just incredible. The most amazing place on earth."
Did Cherry Seaborn have cancer?
Yes, Sheeran and Seaborn revealed in their new documentary The Sum of It All that Seaborn was diagnosed with cancer in February 2022. The pair discuss how difficult it was to navigate, especially during a pregnancy, and how the diagnosis inspired much of Sheeran's recent music. It also pushed Seaborn to take part in the documentary despite being a generally private person. She says in the doc, "It made me massively reflect on our mortality. I would never agree to do anything like this but it made me think, 'Oh if I died, what's people's perception of me? What do you leave behind?'"
How does Ed Sheeran make his marriage work?
Sheeran seems to make his marriage work by maintaining his privacy and making time for his personal life. Like many artists, his wife inspires a lot of his music. Sheeran writes about Seaborn—and she knows it. For the song “I Don’t Care,” it was even her idea to reach out to Bieber for a collab. “Bieber just got married. I’d just got married,” he explained in 2019. “That song is about being at an industry event with the woman you love, or the person you love, and kind of being like, ‘F--k this, let’s just have fun ourselves.’" He added, “It was actually Cherry’s idea, because she was like, ‘Oh, why don’t you get Bieber? Like, he’d be perfect for this… it just fits.'”
Seaborn also famously inspired the song “Perfect.” “The line that goes, 'barefoot on the grass, listening to our favorite song' was about when we were in Ibiza listening to Future’s 'March Madness' literally not wearing any shoes and going mental on the lawn, which was quite a nice time,” he told Us Weekly in 2017.
Sheeran also makes spending time with his wife a priority. In August 2019, for instance, Sheeran announced he was taking a break from touring. “This is my last gig for probably 18 months,” he told a crowd in Ipswich, England, presumably to spend more time with his new wife. It wasn’t the first time he had taken a break from work to be with Seaborn.
In 2015, soon after they reconnected in NYC, he announced on Instagram that he was taking a break from his phone, email and social media. “I'm taking the opportunity of me not having to be anywhere or do anything to travel the world and see everything I missed,” he posted. He later admitted that he wanted to spend time with his new lady. "The catalyst of taking a year off was also the fact that my partner quit her job in New York—which she’s now got back in London, which is really cool—but we were just basically like, let’s quit our jobs and have a year of forming a tight bond. So we went traveling and spent every day for a year together,” he said in an interview.
He’s making time for his daughter, too. Even before his daughter was born, he said in an interview, “if someone told me you can’t tour again for the next 10 years if you have kids that is fine, because that is what I have signed up for.” He’s already irritated with paparazzi snapping pics of his little daughter, saying, “I find it really creepy and weird,” Sheeran says. “It’s fair game when it’s me, I’ve signed up for it. And Cherry signed up for it, she married into this life. But I just find it weird with kids.”
Sheeran is still keenly focused on quality time with his wife. “Me and my wife have a date night. It’s a strict date night every single week. And no matter who’s in town or who wants to see us, it’s always this one night in the week and we go out and our rule is we can’t talk about our baby,” he said in August 2021. “As a parent, you spend so much time discussing being a parent that you kind of forget who you were before. So we have one night a week where we are who we were before.”
At the end of the day, Sheeran doesn’t get caught up in all the glamour of his rock-n-roll lifestyle and his wife is a key part of keeping him grounded. “One day this will [all] f–king end,” he once told Rolling Stone. "And I know the one person that’s going to remain constant is Cherry.”
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