How Justin and Hailey Bieber Turned Into Such a Candid Married Couple

Pregnant Hailey Bieber Stuns in Sheer Look For Date Night With Justin Bieber

It’s OK to admit it: You didn’t kick off 2018 with “Justin Bieber will get married” on your bingo card.

But slowly—and then all at once—you invested a little piece of your heart in Justin and Hailey Bieber, who shared Aug. 23 that they welcomed their first child together.

After this year began with a cryptically quiet few months for the pair, fans started to wonder if perhaps the couple skipping the Met Gala this year was a harbinger of great news. And… 

They were right! The pair announced their pregnancy May 9.

Still, some of the fans were presumably among the concerned parties who wondered what, if anything, was up with the family when Stephen Baldwin reposted a pastor’s Feb. 26 Instagram Reel soliciting prayers for his daughter and son-in-law. No one ever said for sure what it all meant, and everything Justin and Hailey posted in the ensuing weeks was examined within an inch of its life.

Now we know, regardless, that they had more important things on their mind. And sure enough, the pair who have been refreshingly real when it comes to detailing the ups and downs of married life let the world in on their expectant status when they were good and ready.

Almost as if these two were in the habit of enjoying the occasional secret along with their PDA-packed date nights.

Suffice it to say, Hailey and Justin don’t need to be in coordinated ensembles to show how in tune they are, having supported each other through respective health scares, social media toxicity, a global pandemic… Pretty much everything. (Including a lot of good stuff, like Hailey’s rise in the business world and Justin’s dozen-plus Grammy nominations since they tied the knot. And he didn’t even need to get out of his sweats to cheer the launch of her strawberry-glaze Rhode lip treatment.)

“I just think life is changing all the time,” Hailey told Harper’s Bazaar in July 2022. “Day to day, week to week, year to year. I think a perfect example of that is over the last six months, both of us have gone through very serious health issues. You have to figure out how to deal with this s–t as it comes, you know? There’s a reason they say ‘for better or for worse.’ Like, that’s for real!”

But the “silver lining” of those challenges, she noted on Good Morning America, “is that it brings us a lot closer, ’cause you’re going through this together, you’re being there for each other, you’re supporting each other and there’s just something that really bonds you through these times.”

Of course, the at-times bumpy road they’ve been on since getting married—or perhaps since they first met backstage at the TODAY show in 2009 when Hailey was 12 and luxuriously coiffed Justin was 15—makes these epitomes all the sweeter.

“We had talked about wanting to be married young and having a family young and building a life,” Hailey told Elle for its April 2021 cover story. “But we always knew that we were aligned on what we wanted in our future. Even before we knew we wanted to be with each other.”

Still, even though Justin, then 23, asked for future father-in-law Stephen’s blessing to propose to his 21-year-old daughter, when she and Justin turned up engaged in July 2018—less than two months after rekindling their off-and-on relationship— it came as a bit of a surprise to the outside world. And then they went ahead and tied the knot at a New York courthouse two months later, letting the paper trail—and their apparent honeymoon in Italy—speak for itself.  

But five months after their whirlwind nuptials (which were eventually supplemented with a dreamy destination wedding in South Carolina on Sept. 30, 2019), Mr. and Mrs. Bieber were ready to talk about marriage.

Like, really talk about it.

“The thing is, marriage is very hard,” Hailey told Vogue for its March 2019 issue. “That is the sentence you should lead with. It’s really effing hard.”

Reflecting on why assorted naysayers may have had a difficult time wrapping their heads around the couple’s fast-track to forever, Hailey said on Alex Cooper‘s Call Her Daddy podcast in September 2022 that she could see, in hindsight, why it was hard to Belieb in the beginning.

“I think the timing was obviously very rapid and very fast, which now, being four years past that, looking back on it, I totally get it,” Hailey said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, that seemed really drastic and really crazy.’ But that was what we felt was a decision between the two of us and it felt correct for the two of us at the time and clearly we were right because here we are four years later.”

Not to mention, just because the world at large wasn’t intimately familiar with their trajectory didn’t mean that she and Justin didn’t know what they were doing.

And timing really was everything.

Justin was “at a stage of his life where he could make decisions like, ‘I’m done with girls, and I’m done with fooling around, and I’m done with partying,'” Hailey told Elle in 2021. Yes, they were really young—”sounds almost ridiculous when you say it out loud,” she cracked—but, by then, they’d both already “seen a lot” and “lived enough life to know that’s what we wanted.”

And, looking back, Hailey said on their 2020 Facebook Watch show The Biebers on Watch, “it was the best thing that we took time apart and had time to do our own thing and I felt like I found my footing…in my career and on my own and as a young adult.”

Justin admitted to Vogue in 2019 that he was the “emotionally unstable one” in the relationship, more in need of validation than his model bride.  

“Hailey’s very logical and structured, which I need,” the “What Do You Mean?” singer explained. “I’ve always wanted security—with my dad being gone sometimes when I was a kid, with being on the road. With the lifestyle I live, everything is so uncertain. I need one thing that’s certain. And that…is my baby boo.”

Hailey acknowledged that she was still learning how to “be in touch” with her emotions, while Justin “gets there immediately.”

Talking to Vogue, it had been less than a year since their chance reunion in Miami sparked forever vibes in Justin’s heart.

“I just forgot how much I loved her and how much I missed her and how much of a positive impact she made on my life,” he explained. “I was like, Holy cow, this is what I’ve been looking for.”

Still, getting hit with the thunderbolt didn’t automatically fix everything else in his life. And he kinda had been hoping it might…

They had also been to counseling together, “fighting to do this the right way, to build a healthy relationship,” Hailey told Vogue around that same time. “I want people to know that. We’re coming from a really genuine place. But we’re two young people who are learning as we go. I’m not going to sit here and lie and say it’s all a magical fantasy. It’s always going to be hard. It’s a choice…But there’s something beautiful about it anyway—about wanting to fight for something, commit to building with someone.”

On The Biebers on Watch, Justin reiterated to his wife that there were “a lot of things” he still needed to work on when they first got married. “Forgiveness things. Jealousy things. Insecurities that…I didn’t even realize I had until I chose to spend my life with you.”

But putting in the work is… well, it’s working.

“He’s still the person that I wanna be rushing back to,” Hailey told Harper’s Bazaar. “I might fly somewhere and go do a job, but I can’t wait to come back and hang out.”

Scroll on to see Justin and Hailey Bieber’s road to parenthood in pictures: