On paper, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and her husband Andre Gray look like a match made in heaven.
Little Mix star Leigh-Anne and footballer Andre met in a nightclub in Marbella in 2016 and went on to tie the knot in a dreamy Jamaican beachfront wedding seven years later.
The couple also share twin daughters who were born in August 2021.
But behind the sweet snaps and gushing posts, their relationship has been anything but easy.
Leigh-Anne, 34, has been open about how their long-distance relationship has been ‘hell’ over the past few years – with the pair only seeing each other around three days each month because of work commitments.
Andre, also 34, plays football in Turkey, while Leigh-Anne remains in the UK to work on her music and raise their four-year-old twin girls.
Inside Leigh-Anne Pinnock’s tumultuous marriage to Andre Gray as the Little Mix star opens up on ‘betrayal’ and ‘losing trust’ in her long-distance ‘hell’ relationship
They met in a nightclub in Marbella in 2016 and went on to tie the knot in a dreamy Jamaican beachfront wedding in June 2023
This week, Leigh-Anne revealed that her husband went to therapy after he left her ‘heartbroken’ as she opened up about ‘losing trust and betrayal’ in her relationship.
She revealed the footballer had realised he was being ‘selfish’ after he moved to Greece in 2022 to play for Aris Thessaloniki.
Yet Leigh-Anne had raised issues in their relationship long before his move.
Back in 2019, the Don’t Say Love singer revealed that she suffers from a recurring nightmare about her sportsman beau that resulted in her ‘hating him the next day.’
Speaking to Grazia magazine, the Black Magic hitmaker said: ‘I don’t really dream that much but I’ve had the same nightmare a couple of times; that my boyfriend has cheated on me.
‘I wake up hating him the next day.’
‘That’s probably the one thing that keeps me up at night,’ she added.
Two years later she addressed another issue when she publicly confronted her partner on television.
The couple also share twin daughters who were born in August 2021
The mixed-race couple both featured in the Little Mix singer’s documentary, Leigh-Anne: Race, Pop & Power, which aired on BBC One.
In the show, the singer confronted Andre over resurfaced tweets of his from 2012 in which he compared dark-skinned women wearing red lipstick to ‘burnt toast with jam on it’.
Sitting him down to confront his behaviour, Leigh-Anne said: ‘I will never know what it feels like to be a dark-skinned woman but seeing those tweets really made me feel a bit sick.
‘I was really upset because I was just like, “Who is this person? This is horrible”. That wasn’t the person I knew. When they surfaced, my heart sank. Because I was like, “That is not the person I met. It sounds like a child, like a silly child”.’
Explaining his behaviour, Andre said: ‘This is what happens when you’re kids and that. You do become a product of your environment. So whatever you are around every day, and you’re not educated on it, or exposed to why it’s wrong, then it kind of sticks.’
The Watford striker added: ‘There’s no excuse at all, when it all came out and stuff, like obviously I was embarrassed, ashamed, disappointed, at the same time… I had to be a man about it.
‘I’ve made that mistake and I’ve learnt, and I’ve educated myself and grew up to understand how offensive and how wrong it was what I did. There was never any malice, but again, no excuse.’
But behind the sweet snaps and gushing posts, their relationship has been anything but easy
Now the singer has shared that despite things not always being plain sailing, due to Andre ‘wanting to change’, he went to therapy, and they worked on their relationship
Leigh-Anne continued: ‘Because it’s like, how would you feel if someone said that about like your cousin or auntie?’
She continued: ‘We could have a child and it could come out darker than us. Like, you just don’t know?’
While in 2024 she revealed Andre ‘broke her heart’ in the early days of their relationship.
She revealed in a TikTok video that she ‘learnt the power of forgiveness’ as the footballer ‘went out of his way to change for her’.
When asked what she learnt about her last heartbreak, Leigh-Anne admitted she is still with the person who broke her heart.
She said: ‘I learnt the power of forgiveness. I’m still with the person who broke my heart and he went out of his way to change for me.
‘I think if you can actually get to the other side and make it through it, it makes it all worthwhile.
‘Some people might say, oh well why are you still with them? or why are you still giving them another chance? I guess that can be seen as a weakness and not putting yourself first but I think only you know what is truly right for you.’
Leigh-Anne went onto say the couple got through the ‘struggles’ and now they are in a ‘really beautiful place’.
She continued: ‘If that person can really show that they want to change, you cannot change somebody but if they go out of their way to change themselves I really do think that kind of tells you everything you need to know.
‘For me personally I had to go through these struggles and things in our relationship to get to the point where we are now, which is a really beautiful place.’
The Don’t Say Love songstress also added that it is ‘OK’ to forgive someone and it doesn’t have to come across as ‘a weak thing to do’ as it can be ‘healing’
Leigh-Anne said: ‘It is OK to give somebody another chance but it isn’t OK to let somebody take the p**s out of you.
‘Make sure you have those barriers up to protect yourself and to know when enough is enough.
‘It takes being hurt to sort of build that armor up to be like, I’m not going through that again. Don’t see forgiveness as a weak thing to do, it can be a really powerful and healing thing.’
Being a professional footballer for a team abroad means Andre spends long periods away from his family home in the UK.
Leigh-Anne joined Rosie and Chris Ramsey on their Sh***ed, Married, Annoyed podcast in October, where she discussed her ‘hard’ family dynamic with her daughters and her husband.
Discussing their long-distance relationship, Leigh-Anne explained: ‘Even now with my husband living abroad… we probably see each other, maybe if we are lucky, three days in a month. It’s so s**t.’
She added: ‘We have been doing that for three years. They (the twins) have just turned four.’
Host Rosie then remarked: ‘That’s hard, that must be hard for him as well though?’
Leigh-Anne replied: ‘So hard. He’s struggling a little bit to be fair.’
It follows Leigh-Anne’s 2024 revelation about her rocky relationship with Andre.
She revealed ‘he still had a lot of growing up to do’ in their early relationship and cryptically discussed how people deal with getting cheated on by a partner.
She told Glamour Magazine: ‘I think people often think that if something bad happens in a relationship – if you get cheated on or whatever – that it’s automatically done, it’s over, and that’s fair enough, but in my case, I chose to work at it, and I am so happy that I did.’
Leigh-Anne attributed some of their early struggles to the toxic masculinity within the football industry as she hinted at their past difficulties.
She went on: ‘Unfortunately, I think a big part of it was his environment and the stereotype that comes with it, in my case, I found it to be quite true, but I’ve watched him grow, and we’ve come so far.’
‘When you know you have something special, you want to fight for it. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but if it does, my God, it feels great,’ she added.
Back in June 2024, Leigh-Anne was said to have taken a swipe at Andre during her first solo gig in London.
The singer celebrated the release of her EP, No Hard Feelings, with a concert at Lafayette, with her footballer partner in the audience.
However, after belting out her new song and some of her biggest hits with Little Mix, Leigh-Anne reportedly opened up about the hurt that Andre has caused her.
According to The Sun, during the gig a spoken word interlude played as Leigh-Anne got changed off stage, where she opened up on the difficult period, mentioning ‘crying’ and asking her husband: ‘Why would you do this to us?’
They report she said: ‘Exciting but dangerous. Six months of bliss and hell. A stolen kiss becoming pure as us together. But how do you say serves me right?
‘The images, the thoughts. The phone that once connect-ed us, now a constant reminder. What are you doing? What is going on? Why would you do this to us?’
She added: ‘All I could see was white from my bed’s mystery eyes. My duvet keeping me warm now. The patterns, the running, the crying? Our forbidden beginning.
Andre currently plays for Turkish club Fatih Karagümrük, meaning he spends long periods away from his family home in the UK (pictured last year)
Leigh-Anne joined Rosie and Chris Ramsey on their sh***ed, Married, Annoyed podcastin October, where she discussed her ‘hard’ family dynamic with her daughters and her husband
Back in June 2024, Leigh-Anne was said to have taken a swipe at Andre during her first solo gig in London
‘What I know is that I love you. That we are a whole made from two. So I chose to open my heart to forgive. Restart. We are sunshine and summer. Destined to last.
‘I’ve seen who you have chosen to become as our two became four completing our circle. You chose us. You chose not to be a replica. You know how to be a dad, and I don’t know how you do.’
Much of Leigh-Anne’s debut EP focuses on her rocky relationship with Andre.
Her fourth single Forbidden Fruit contained lyrics that hinted she cheated on her ex to be with Andre.
She described the song as having ‘sweaty, sultry, reggae dance vibes’ and revealed it tells the story of when she and Andre first met.
And, if Forbidden Fruit’s lyrics are anything to go by, Leigh-Anne was less than faithful to her ex on her journey to forever with Andre.
Leigh-Anne croons: ‘Where do I begin? Woke up in somebody’s bed, oh no. Got one I should stay with and one I should stay away from.
‘He was doing him and I wasn’t really innocent, oh no … Devil in a dress, had you powerless knew it wasn’t right soon as we left together.’
Leigh-Anne even hinted that Andre cheated too with final lyric: ‘Broke a couple hearts just to be forever, if they mad, whatever’.
In 2021, Leigh-Anne was praised by fans for confronting her Andre over disrespectful tweets he made towards dark-skinned black women
Back in 2019, Leigh-Anne revealed that she suffers from a recurring nightmare about her sportsman beau that leads to her ‘hating him the next day’
This week, the singer shared that despite things not always being plain sailing, due to Andre ‘wanting to change’, he went to therapy, and they worked on their relationship.
Speaking to Paloma Faith on her Mad Sad Bad podcast, Leigh-Anne revealed she has been betrayed before.
She said: ‘I went through a bit of a weird time with my husband actually and I think that sort of not being totally honest and losing trust and that kind of betrayal.
‘I think like heartbreak is wild, like it’s awful and especially someone that you’re so madly in love with and that they can hurt you.’
The singer explained how footballer Andre realised he was being ‘selfish’ after he moved abroad to Turkey to play for Fatih Karagümrük.
She continued: ‘Well, I think that person has to want to change and he did.
‘And I think you can go through things in relationship, but if they aren’t willing to change for you, forget it.
‘They have to do the work and they have to turn it around because again it’s not you, it’s not on you.
‘He went to therapy and I think for us what really helped for us, he started playing abroad and he had more time to himself to kind of look and realise that everything that he was doing was not how you make a relationship work, it’s not. It’s selfish.’
Leigh-Anne and Andre confirmed their relationship at the end of 2016 with a Snapchat video of them cuddling in a club.
She paid tribute to him in June 2018 for his birthday, writing: ‘It’s been 2 years and I still look at you with the same love and awe if not more.
‘We’ve had the most amount of ups, and a couple downs.. all that I believe has made us stronger.
‘You are honestly the best thing to ever happen to me, I love you so b****y much and I cannot wait for our next chapter and to spend the rest of my life with you! Happy birthday my bubba.’
Leigh-Anne’s last known boyfriend before him is Jordan Kiffin, another footballer, whom she dated for three years until 2016, the year she met Andre.
