Whenever, Wherever: The Secrets of Shakira and Gerard Piqué’s Private Love Story

It would be understandable if Shakira had trust issues.

Her last boyfriend ended up suing her for $250 million, and then again for $100 million, alleging that he had successfully managed her for a decade and when she unceremoniously cut their business ties it cost him big-time.

Months later, in August 2013, Antonio de la Rua’s lawsuits and an attempt to freeze her assets were dismissed, with judges in different countries citing jurisdictional issues and a “prenuptial-type agreement applicable to unmarried couples” the two had signed in 2006.

“I have moved on in my life and could not be happier now,” Shakira said at the time. “I hope this harassment will now come to an end.”

She had indeed moved on in life—personally, professionally and geographically.

By then, Shakira (full name Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll) was mom to son Milan with Spanish soccer player Gerard Piqué. And while falling in love was a leap of faith, believing in him has never been an issue.

“I thought, ‘he’s still a boy, but what can I do,” Shakira—who’s exactly 10 years older and like Piqué is celebrating a birthday today—sings in her 2017 song “Me Enamoré” (basically, “I fell in love”). Also in the song: “I like that beard” and “with you I’d have 10 children, let’s start with two children.”

“I saw him alone, and I dove in,” she sings. “I fell in love, I’m in love.”

She and Piqué met in the spring of 2010 when he appeared in the video for “Waka Waka (This Time for South Africa),” the official song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which was shot in Madrid.

Spain went on to win the World Cup that summer and, following Piqué’s retirement from the national team after the 2018 World Cup, Shakira recalled that victorious July 2010 day: “”Love, you have just finished a stage that we will always keep in our hearts. One of the happiest moments of my life was also seeing you win in 2010 with the team and celebrate Spain the champions!”

Shakira and de la Rúa split up that August.

Anyway…

Not that things immediately got steamy between her and Piqué in Madrid. Rather, they barely talked until they were both in South Africa and, even then, they started out chatting about the weather, like so much elevator conversation.

“It all started when we were together in South Africa and I wrote to her,” Piqué recalled to Spain’s TV3 in 2016. “She was already there because she sang in the opening ceremony and I asked her what the weather was like.

“It’s the typical stupid question, and the normal answer is to tell me to bring a jacket [June and July are winter in South Africa],” he quipped. “But she started telling me what the weather was, like, every minute and it got to the point where I told her we [Spain] would have to get to the World Cup final to see her again—she was singing at the final.”

While matches went on in different cities during the month-long tournament, both the opening ceremony and the final match took place in Johannesburg. Chilly, about 57 degrees Fahrenheit that night.

The next month, Shakira and de la Rúa quietly broke up, though they didn’t confirm it until January 2011 when they released a statement clarifying that they had separated romantically but not professionally.

“During our almost 11 years together we have loved each other deeply, taken care of each other and stood by one another,” they said in a joint message. “They have been the most wonderful years of our lives, and thanks to that love and the respect that we share for one another we have been an exceptional couple and partners. However, since August 2010, we made a mutual decision to take time apart from our romantic relationship. Throughout this time we have continued to work together hand in hand, have remained close and have kept the details absolutely private until now.”

“We’re just friends,” Piqué told reporters days later, when asked if he had any thoughts on Shakira’s split. “There’s nothing more to it. I don’t know anything about the breakup. You [reporters] have just told me about it. We’re just friends and that’s that.”

Spanish tabloids were already hot on their trail, reporting on all sorts of rumored trysts, resulting in more denials that they were dating.

“You shouldn’t pay attention to Waka-rumors,” Shakira, who had been renting a home on and off in Barcelona since shooting her 2010 “Loca” video there, cracked at a press conference back in December 2010 at the Dalí museum in nearby Figueres. (Many of her and Piqué’s comments have been translated from their original Spanish.)

Meanwhile, in November 2010, Shakira told Britain’s Independent that she was trying to learn Catalan, the language of the Catalonian capital of Barcelona (also Piqué’s hometown). “I bought a little Catalan book to practice but I can only speak Catalan in Barcelona,” she said, “so I don’t know if it makes much sense! But I like things that don’t make sense but expand my brain.”

On Feb. 2, Piqué posted a photo that showed Shakira had been part of the group celebrating his 24th birthday. Then, later that month, they were spotted holding hands while leaving a restaurant in Barcelona together—and they didn’t look too unhappy about being seen. A couple days later they were photographed at the airport, on their way out of the city via private jet. 

They finally declared themselves on Instagram at the end of March 2011.

“Les presento a mi sol,” Shakira captioned a photo of them. Translation: “I present to you my sunshine.”

And they’ve been together ever since, welcoming Milan in January 2013 and son Sasha in January 2015. Shakira and Piqué both come from tight-knit families and prioritize their kids, who are being raised speaking Spanish and English, above all else.

“Becoming a mom forced me to re-prioritize and make room for the things that are most important,” Shakira told Parents in 2016, “while recognizing that there are things I can let go of and the world won’t crumble around me.”

Their lives are an international whirlwind at times, but Shakira has long thought that having such dedicated parents who each have separate careers is a great example for her two boys.

“Growing up with a working mom is a start,” she said. “I also think their dad is a good example of a modern man to emulate. Gerard and I pretty much share all parenting responsibilities, although I’m definitely the disciplinarian.”

When Milan was first born, Shakira gushed to Us Weekly about how hands-on Piqué was, saying, “Thank God the father is very involved. He has been amazing. The baby spends as much time with me as he does with his dad. He’s the kind of dad who’s full hands on. He changes diapers, he bathes him, he enjoys playing with the baby, he enjoys feeding him, all of that stuff. So that’s great help for me, you know. I can’t imagine doing all of this and not having the father do his part of the job. So that’s a huge help to me.”

Through it all, Piqué has continued to play for Barcelona, where he’s been since 2008, an impressive run with one club after playing four years with Manchester United. 

“I never planned for anything else,” he told reporters last year after signing a contract extension that will keep him with his hometown team until June 2022, when he’s 35. “This has always been my home. Every season we’ve won at least one title. That’s the best thing about my time here, the fact that we’ve always competed for trophies until the very end.

“I hope that it stays the same until I retire. It was Barca or nothing. I don’t want to be anywhere else that isn’t here. I am not motivated to play for another club. I play football to play for Barca. If I was at another team, I would have retired from football.”

Shakira being a world-famous singer and Piqué being a star athlete in his country’s most beloved sport, they’ve certainly weathered their share of split rumors, but ultimately end up thumbing their nose at them every time—they’re quite private as far as the specifics of their relationship, but a well-timed social media post usually does the trick.

And if it’s not one kind of rumor, it’s another—namely, is that the sound of wedding bells? And if not, why not?

Though people could speculate till kingdom come about why these two haven’t tied the knot, Shakira just doesn’t sound into it. She faced the same sorts of questions while she was still with de la Rúa, and she stated her actual goals (no pun intended) very clearly.

“I think I felt trapped in a golden cage for many years,” Shakira told USA Today in 2009 while promoting her album She Wolf. “The culture, the education, the upbringing, what society expects from you…Over the past year, I’ve been asking myself the question, ‘What does Shakira really want? What are her desires and how do I fulfill them?'”

And she was figuring it out.

“I want to reproduce,” said the singer and activist, whose Barefoot Foundation helps fund schools in Colombia. “I’m semi-married. I used to believe I had to be married to have kids…The culture kind of gives us tunnel vision. But we function as a married couple; we don’t need papers for that.”

After being with Piqué for a few years, in 2014 she said that she still didn’t think marriage was “a necessary step in a couple’s life.”

“We already have what’s essential, you know?” she told Glam Belleza Latina. “We have a union, a love for each other, and a baby. I think that those aspects of our relationship are already established, and marriage is not going to change them. But if I’m ever going to get married, he’s the one.” (In that vein, she has referred to herself and Piqué as being “sort of married.”)

In the course of the legal wrangling down the road, it came out that she and de la Rúa had signed a prenuptial-type agreement for unmarried couples that, according to Shakira’s attorneys when they successfully moved to have de la Rúa’s lawsuits dismissed, “expressly manifested their wish to conserve, each separately, the totality of their past, current and future assets.”

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to guess that she and Piqué have some sort of paperwork in place, considering they have children and are both independently wealthy. Shakira, who has made multiple Forbes Most Powerful Women lists, has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and when you combine touring, real estate and endorsement deals such as Dannon yogurt or a line of toys for Fisher-Price, her rumored net worth is between $220 million and $300 million.

Piqué ranked No. 17 on Forbes‘ 2018 list of the world’s highest-paid soccer players with a $17.5 million salary and $3.3 million in endorsements, his biggest backer being Nike. His Barcelona extension came with a buyout clause of $600 million.

Countless celebrities can attest to the dangers of so many people knowing just how well-off they are, however, and last summer there was a break-in at their family’s ocean-view home in Esplugues de Llobregat, five miles outside Barcelona.

Piqué was playing in Germany and Shakira was off on tour, but ESPN reported that the athlete was heard telling Spain’s King Felipe VI—when the monarch asked Piqué for an update during a meet-and-greet with the national team—that his parents were at the house that night. Luckily no one was hurt, but the thieves, who broke in on a stormy night that helped mask the noise, made off with watches and jewelry.

Also in the more money, more problems department: fortunes tend to get audited, and Shakira is facing tax evasion charges in Spain, joining a club that includes soccer studs Cristiano Ronaldo (he pleaded guilty and agreed to a suspended sentence and a $21 million fine) and Piqué’s Barcelona teammate Lionel Messi (found guilty and given a suspended sentence that was reduced to a fine).

Prosecutors allege that Shakira failed to pay taxes on more than $16 million in earnings between 2012 and 2014 while citing her residence as being in the Bahamas but actually living in Barcelona with her family. She officially changed her residence to Spain in 2015.

A source told E! News that the “Hips Don’t Lie” artist was fully in compliance with the tax laws of her new home and that she became a citizen after she “spent more than 183 days in Spain in a fiscal year.” The insider added, “She took the initiative to declare herself a tax resident in Spain and pay taxes in this country.”

A 2017 Guardian report on the Paradise Papers, a leaked cache of documents that divulged where numerous celebrities choose to keep their money in order to pay the least taxes (which couldn’t be more common), noted that Shakira was listed as a resident of the Bahamas though she lived in Barcelona. Her lawyer said that, as an international star, she lived in many places “and, in every case, has fully met the laws of all the jurisdictions where she has resided.”

But these apparently are issues for the lawyers to sift through. Shakira and Gerard’s lives appear to be going along as usual.

In November, the couple went truffle hunting, showing off some oh-so-valuable white truffles on Instagram, and then spent New Year’s on a snowy holiday with their kids.

Now, with 2019 thoroughly under way, Piqué’s back on the pitch and Shakira has resumed working out with longtime trainer Anna Kaiser, who keeps her in tip-top shape for tours and appearances. And—happy new year and birthday indeed—the singer was just spotted out in Barcelona rocking a fresh haircut.

This month she’s nominated for three Premio Lo Nuestro Awards, including Pop/Rock Artist of the Year, airing Feb. 21 on Univision, and she’s up for Latin Song of the Year, for “Clandestino,” at the iHeart Radio Music Awards in March.

“Break is over!” she announced on Instagram, heading back to Kaiser’s AKT studio.

Asked how she and Piqué handled two kids, their relationship and their respectively demanding schedules, which even when they’re not at work require entire lifestyle regimens, Shakira told Hello! in 2017, “We try to do the best we can. There’s a lot of love, that’s the foundation of any family. You have to take care of it and dedicate time. Family is the most important thing for me. The rest is secondary.”

And after almost a decade together, that original fire still burns, no matter the weather.

When she played “Me Enamoré” for Piqué, Shakira recalled to ET Canada, beaming from ear to ear, “he looks at me with those eyes, like awww…really appreciating the fact that I, almost, paid an homage to that moment in our lives when we met each other—that turning point in our lives where everything changed.”