Ed Sheeran and his wife Cherry Seaborn have looked back fondly on their first date, which could have ended in disaster.
The “Perfect” singer reflected on how his and Seaborn’s relationship began in the first episode of his new Disney Plus documentary, The Sum Of It All.
Sheeran has known Seaborn since they were children growing up in Sheffield, but they only started dating in 2015 after they reunited in New York City.
Seaborn began by recalling how the pair went boating on the lake in New York’s Central Park on the “busiest, hottest day of the year”.
“We rowed out into the middle of the lake,” Sheeran continued. “And the boats just started surrounding us, all of these tourists.”
His wife added that the tourist-filled boats then started “rowing after” them.
“And then Chez [Sheeran’s nickname for Seaborn] goes, ‘Do you want me to row?’ and I said, ‘Cherry, the last thing is a picture of you rowing me!’,” Sheeran said.
The couple married in a secret wedding ceremony in 2019 and share two children, daughters Lyra and Jupiter.
In March, Sheeran revealed that Seaborn was diagnosed with a tumour while pregnant with their second child.
During their documentary, the couple reflected on their romance and Seaborn said they were friends while attending Thomas Mills High School in Suffolk.
“We had, I guess, flirted with the idea of flirting. Does that make sense?” she said.
Sheeran added: “We did have a little smooch at that time and she basically went to university in America and I went on tour and we didn’t see each other for a few years.”
Seaborn explained that she was “always wanted” to attend university across the pond and received an “offer to work in tech and finance in New York”.
“We bumped into each other again, and me and Chez started dating,” the “Thinking Out Loud” singer continued. “It just felt natural, it just felt right.”
Sheeran is set to release his sixth studio album Subtract on Friday 5 May.
Announcing the album in March, he said he had been working on it “for a decade” and that writing songs “helps [him] make sense of [his] feelings”.
The album contains some of his “deepest darkest thoughts”, which came after a “series of events [that] changed [his] life” at the beginning of 2022.
Sheeran is currently awaiting the verdict of his copyright trial, in which he was sued by the heirs of Ed Townsend, the songwriter who co-wrote Marvin Gaye’s 1973 track “Let’s Get It On”.
The heirs allege that Sheeran’s 2014 song “Thinking Out Loud” copied harmonic progressions, melodic and rhythmic elements from Gaye’s song without permission. He has vehemently denied plagiarising the song and vowed to quit music if he loses the case.
