11 Things You Didn’t Know About Britney Spears And Kevin Federline’s Relationship

Time really does fly! It has been almost 10 years since Britney Spears and Kevin Federline called it quits on their two-year marriage and, while many of us expected the marriage to end in divorce, what we didn’t expect was all of the drama that ensued. Fortunately, both of them are now in a much better place. Kevin has since remarried and Britney’s still doing the music thing, but we still long for that simpler time in 2004 when she was on top of the world and decided to take a lowly backup dancer along for the ride.

11. Meeting

Kevin initially met the “…Baby One More Time” singer when she was 18. She was just starting to make it big and he was doing backup dancing for LFO, who were opening for her. Although there wasn’t an attraction initially, they wound up meeting again in 2004 at a club in Hollywood called Joseph’s, this time with mutual friends who introduced them. According to Kevin, it was love at first sight. “I met her at a club in Hollywood,” he said. “Our eyes met and that was it. We just hit it off right away. I learned real fast how much of a whirlwind the press and everything was.”

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10. Falling in Love

After meeting, they spent a week together, but then she was supposed to be flying out for her Onyx tour; however, she really didn’t want to go because she wanted to stay and hang out with Kevin. She then cancelled her flight to Europe and called Kevin and told him to get his passport so that he could come on tour with her. It was in London that they realized they were falling in love.

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9. The Ex Factor

When Federline met Spears, he was reportedly still involved with Shar Jackson, who was six months pregnant with the couple’s second child at the time. Jackson didn’t take the breakup so well and told People that the pop star had stolen her man. “It wasn’t like just breaking up a relationship,” she said. “It was like breaking up a family. I know Britney in passing. We’ve run into each other at a couple of events. She knows who I am, she knows I’m his girlfriend.”

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8. Proposal

After a three-month courtship, Britney popped the question to Kevin on a flight from Ireland to New York, after finishing the European leg of her Onyx tour. Initially Kevin declined, but then he popped the question to her a moment later. “My head was spinning. Oh my God, I was happy,” he said. “I wasn’t really thinking about asking her right away but I did without reservation. I’d known for a while that she’s the one.”

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7. Surprise Wedding Ceremony

Initially they were planning to marry at the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara; however, they changed their minds at the last minute because of the media attention their wedding was receiving. Instead of a big, lavish wedding in October 2004, they only invited 27 friends family members to what they pretended was their engagement party in September of that same year. Shortly before the wedding, the guests were informed that Britney and Kevin were going to be getting married.

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6. Reality Show

Britney and Kevin decided to film their courtship, engagement and wedding and have it turned into a reality show, Britney and Kevin: Chaotic, which aired on UPN. While the couple seems totally infatuated with each other in the episodes, critics derided the show for being self-indulgent, mindless and difficult to watch because of the nauseating camera angles.

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5. Children

They wasted no time when it came to having children. A year after their wedding, they welcomed their first son, Sean Preston, into the world and a year after that Britney gave birth to their second son, Jayden James. Unfortunately, after becoming a mother, the paparazzi would not leave her alone and she was once caught on-camera with little Sean on her lap as she drove. She received a lot of bad press over the incident.

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4. Breakup

Just over two years after Spears and Federline tied the knot and less than two months after she gave birth to their second child Jayden, she filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. According to him, the 2006 divorce filing came right out of the blue. “It’s hard enough to be in a marriage, and then have a kid, then kids. It changes everything,” Federline told People. “For me, I’d become more concerned with my children. Not that I ignored Britney, but my kids are always most important. … I mean, we were having complications. I didn’t give her an ultimatum, but I was trying to work stuff out with her, and she didn’t even talk to me or anything and went behind my back and filed [for divorce]. [I was] completely blindsided.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, she reportedly told him that she wanted a divorce via text!

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3. Custody Battle

When Britney blindsided Kevin by filing for divorce, things quickly got messy. Both of them asked for sole custody of their two sons, Sean and Jayden. While they initially had joint custody, she lost custody in October 2007 after she failed to take parenting classes and undergo random drug and alcohol testing as per the judge’s orders. She managed to secure monitored visitation rights a few days later, but she lost those rights in January 2008 when she refused to return her sons to K-Fed. The police got involved and Spears was whisked away by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and was placed on a 72-hour lock down for mental evaluation. In July 2008, Kevin was again granted sole custody while she received visitation rights and, as of 2009, she was allowed to take care of her children 50% of the time.

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2. Marrying for the Wrong Reasons

In 2008, the pop princess admitted in a documentary called For the Record that she married the former backup dancer for all of the wrong reasons. “I think I married for the wrong reasons,” the “Oops…I Did It Again” singer said. “Instead of following my heart and doing something that made me really happy, I just did it for the idea of everything.” She also said that things between them began to sour when he started working on his own projects like the rap album. “That’s when things got weird,” she said.

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1. In a Better Place

Federline recently gave an interview to Access Hollywood where he discussed his whirlwind romance with Spears and mentioned that their relationship is now in a really good place. “I mean, it was a good time in my life. We have two beautiful children. The way that everything has turned out, everybody’s happy. Co-parenting is going great. I can’t complain,” he said. “We talk when we need to, and it’s always about the boys – mostly school stuff and making sure we stay on top of that. It’s going great. I’m in a happy place right now.”