Ashlee Simpson And Piet Wentz were a – temporary – match made in pop rock heaven.
“I've always liked guys with an inner nerd. “I'm an inner nerd myself,” the “Nothing New” singer said after meeting the fellow musician in 2006. “So I don't like anyone who thinks they're too cool.”
Two years later, Simpson and Wentz married and had a baby. She was 24 when she gave birth to their son Bronx in November 2008.
While fans of the couple may have been shocked when the couple called it quits in 2011, he later shed light on their rocky romance.
“I thought it was going to be a forever thing,” the Fall Out Boy bassist said Howard Stern in 2015. “I'm not the kind of man… My parents have been married, I think, for 35 years. Forty years, this year perhaps? But no, I didn't [anticipate the split]. At the same time, we were both very young.”
He admitted that their relationship suffered after his band went on a long hiatus.
“When we were 31, we'd had all these great years as a band, and then we took time off and I basically became Mr. Mom. I had the beard, the flannel shirt. I didn't know what my identity was. That played a role. When your identity is what you do, it's hard when you stop doing it,” he told Stern. “[I’m thinking]“Well, no one really takes a picture of me. I actually spend all day with my child. Who cares?' Remember that if you stop caring about your personal appearance and your personal hygiene, you will become even more depressed, but you will also do it more. It's like a vicious circle.”
It hit the fan when he was “really upset” about hosting a Jingle Ball event in late 2010. “I wanted to perform, but I didn't perform. I drank a lot of beers and that night I hit my head and ended up having to get stitches,” he recalled. “All these things that didn't look like me at all, it was part of this cycle of being disappointed.”
At the time, he revealed that it hurt that Simpson left him when he was down.
“I would be an idiot to think that I didn't contribute to unraveling it,” Wentz explained. “Of course at first I think: this sucks! You failed me!' Those kind of things. But you gain perspective. We have a child together. Our child is wonderful.”
Both Wentz and Simpson moved on with new partners. He started dating Meagan Camper and the pair have welcomed son Saint, born in 2014, and daughter Marvel, born in 2018. The Ashlee Simpson Show alum, for her part, married Evan Ross in 2014, gave birth to daughter Jagger in 2015 and son Ziggy in 2020.
“It can all go in different directions. I think the fact that there is a lot of respect among all of us. That makes it easier. And we are all very good friends. It’s easy, we got really lucky with that,” the 7th Heaven alum exclusively shared We weekly September 2018.
Scroll through for Simpson and Wentz's timeline: