Real-Life Celebrity Romance: Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes

Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes – theirs was a not too uncommon though still unconventional start best summarized with a sampling from an old forgotten standard – “If loving you is wrong, I don’t wanna be right/If being right means living without you, I’d rather be wrong than right.”

How Did Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes Meet?

Actors falling in love with a co-star despite the bonds of matrimony is nothing new in Hollywood. But there’s actually a bit more to Cibrian and Rimes inauspicious beginning than a mere double union-busting affair – even if the pair didn’t realize it at the time.

“Well we don’t remember meeting each other,” Rimes clarifies. “No, but there is a photo of it, clearly, and it is odd. We both were like, ‘Wait, what?’ I think he was 23, I was 14 at the time, and he was doing Young and the Restless. He found that right after we had worked together. He was just digging through some photos in his garage and found it.”

But since neither the seasoned thespian nor the songstress-turned-actress recalled that long ago fan appreciation event, they took for granted their first meeting happening on the set of Nora Roberts’ Northern Lights, on which he starred as a recently hired chief of police and she played a talented pilot.

The romantic spark that ignited between the two was flamed by immediate tabloid speculation that something more than rehearsing was taking place behind the scenes – despite the film stars marital status – Cibrian was wed to Brandi Glanville (with whom he shared two children) and Rimes was separated from Dean Sheremet, her husband of seven years.

US Weekly would exclusively reveal the Cibrian/Rimes dalliance, alongside still images taken from a restaurant security camera that showed the duo engaging in an undeniably romantic clinch.

Subsequently, Glanville filed a divorce request as did Sheremet. In June of 2010, Rimes admitted to People magazine that, “I did one of the most selfish things that I possibly could do…I take responsibility for everything I’ve done. I hate that people got hurt. But I don’t regret the outcome.”

Making It Offical
On Christmas Eve of that same year, Cibrian proposed – with the aid of a five-carat oval diamond set in rose gold fleur-de-lis – and Rimes accepted. The April 22, 2011 ceremony was a complete surprise to the 40 or so attendees who had accepted what they believed to be an invitation to celebrate the engagement.

The Surreal Life
“Our relationship didn’t quite start off like we had planned,” Rimes intoned. “We were both married to other people when we fell in love,” Cibrian added, along with, “And I know most of you think my wife is a homewrecker and a stalker…Look, everyone thinks they really know how it is with us. But there’s two sides to every story — and this is ours.”

So begins the pilot of LeAnn & Eddie, the couple’s one-season-and-done attempt to dissuade the public of the notion that their romance was the steamy, sordid mess that the tabloids and the gossip mongers were painting it to be.

Despite the program’s failure, it did seem the next natural stepping stone following Rimes’ 2013 album Spitfire, which used her history with Cibrian for lyric fodder, especially the aptly titled single, Borrowed.

Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes – Moving Forward

The early years of the Cibrian/Rimes romance were typified by frequent arguments, both private and public, with Glanville. However, the passage of time has seemingly cooled the ex’s animosity.

In April of 2018, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star tweeted, “The three of us sat and talked for hours hashed everything out and the fued [sic] with @leannrimes Eddie and I is over!”