Nick and Vanessa Lachey go way back. In a new interview, the couple reflected upon the first time they met and how their relationship blossomed amid Nick’s divorce from Jessica Simpson.
“Nick and I knew each other in passing because we both worked at MTV,” the TV personality, 39, said on Tamron Hall on Tuesday, February 11. “He would come on the show to promote his album or anything he was doing at the time, and I was there working on TRL. We would just catch up and we would just talk and hang out. And then when he was single and I was single … he asked me to be in his music video.”
Nick, now 46, and Vanessa started texting each other before reconnecting in person. At the time, she was living in New York City and he was in Los Angeles.
“We spent a lot of time apart early in our relationship,” the 98 Degrees member told Tamron Hall. “[We would be] sitting on the phone for hours a day, not wanting to get off the phone.”
But when it came time for the pair to see each other in person on the set of Nick’s “What’s Left of Me” music video in 2006, Vanessa felt nervous.
“I get there and we have this emotional connection, and this is the first time we’re gonna physically see each other after the butterflies,” the actress recounted. “And they say, ‘Uh, Miss Minnillo’ — ‘cause my maiden name is Vanessa Minnillo — ‘Mr. Lachey has picked out your wardrobe. It’s over there in the back.’”
Vanessa remembered seeing that Nick had selected a “blank tank top” for her that “barely covered” her backside. The singer, however, insisted that his wife “has a tendency to exaggerate her stories a little bit,” joking, “Baby, you can’t tell these stories anymore. You get me in trouble.”
The “What’s Left of Me” music video premiered on MTV in April 2006. Two months later, Nick and Simpson, 39, finalized their divorce. (The Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica costars famously appeared on TRL several times during their nearly four-year marriage — while Vanessa hosted.)
Nick went on to propose to Vanessa in November 2010, and they tied the knot eight months later. The Love Is Blind cohosts are now the parents of three children: Camden, 7, Brooklyn, 5, and Phoenix, 3.
When Hall, 49, asked the former VJ about the secret to her marriage, a visibly emotional Vanessa responded, “You know what it is? It’s all of it. It’s all of the things. It’s the love, it’s the mess, it’s the work, it’s the joy, it’s the tears. It’s everything and the thing — I’m actually going to get choked up thinking about it — is that we both put in work. I love him so much and respect him that when we do argue or we do fight or we do love or we do praise, it’s coming from such a deep core place.”
