Remembering Nick Lachey’s First Marriage to Jessica Simpson

“I lived it,” he pointed out. “I know what the truth is, so I don’t need to read it, read someone’s version of it in a story.”

Lachey, for his part, is living a whole other existence now as Vanessa’s husband and dad to sons Camden, 10, and Phoenix, 5, and daughter Brooklyn, 7. 

“I am thrilled to be where I am in life,” he told Andy Cohen. “That was 20 years ago. It’s honestly the last thing on my mind these days except when someone brings it up…I understand why people want to ask, but it’s just so not a part of my life anymore that it’s not even on my radar. She is doing her thing and I am doing mine and that’s the way it should be.”

Seriously, isn’t it the worst when someone brings it up?

But while Simpson and Lachey actually had a much easier time of it than some stars who parted ways and yet remain haunted by their exes in headline form, the reminders continue that audiences once fell in love with Newlyweds—and they committed for the long haul, even when the Newlyweds themselves realized it was time to move on.

(Originally published July 11, 2017, at 1:34 p.m. PT)