Alicia Keys Will Have Her Biggest Fan In the Grammys Audience
The couple have known each other since they were teenagers.
On January 26, Alicia Keys will hit the stage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles to host the Grammys for the second time. Given that Keys has won 15 Grammy Awards in her career, it's safe to say she knows her way around music's biggest night. And while, obviously, all of us will be cheering her on as she hosts the show (can she please bring out Michelle Obama again?), she'll have her number one supporter in the audience: Keys' husband and Grammy-winning artist Kasseem Dean, known as Swizz Beatz.
The couple of over a decade has a relationship for the books. Here's everything you should know about one of the music industry's favorite couples: Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz.
They met when they were teenagers.
If you're thinking this is a love-at-first-sight kind of story, you are mistaken! The Grammy-winning artists were introduced by a mutual friend who went to Beatz's high school. Keys was 16 and Beatz was 17 when they first crossed paths.
"Honestly, I didn't really like him that much," she told Marie Claire UK in 2013. "I thought he was too ostentatious. Beatz will have the fastest car, the biggest jewelry, the loudest jacket. Everything with his is really over the top. I used to see him and think, 'He is so annoying.'"
Keys' first impression obviously changed, because the private couple began to date sometime in 2008. The relationship was only confirmed when Beatz referenced his 2008 birthday party thrown by Keys at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in a 2009 remix of Drake's 'Best I Ever Had 'with the lyrics, "She gave me a party at the Guggenheim . . . What's next? The ring? The baby? She really loves me."
On the Wendy Williams Show in 2013, Keys opened up about when she started to fall in love with the award-winning producer, "I think what happened was, he really got me when I saw how far his mind went," she explained. "He's really, really intelligent and knows so many interesting things."
She added later, "He knew all this stuff I had no idea about. I think that he loves to live life, and he really showed me how to live life in a beautiful way."
The pair have had their share of drama.
With any relationship, you have your fair share of drama, and Keys and Beatz had plenty of that when they first started dating. Around the rumored time they started dating, Beatz wasstill married to artist Mashonda Tifrere, and they shared a child, Kasseem "KJ" Dean, together.
Mashonda took it to Twitter in 2009 and spoke about the drama in now-deleted tweets, saying, "I made it very clear that on the contrary of what she might be hearing, I am still married to my husband, living with him and just had a child. It's been two years, and I still have not received a response. What I do receive is constant displays of selfishness and disconcern to me and my son."
She later continued in the open letter to the "Girl on Fire" singer, "If you are reading this Alicia, let me start by saying, you know what you did. You know the role you played, and you know how you contributed to the ending of my marriage. You know that I asked you to step back and let me handle my family issues. Issues that you helped to create."
While Keys and Beatz never addressed the statements Mashonda wrote, three years later Keys told Jet,"[They] were apart for some time before we ever got together... that doesn't matter to those who take pleasure in trying to knock others down... there's no need to fight what's not true."
Things are all good now, and the three of them and their children went on a beach vacation to St.Barts back in 2014.
The couple is married, and they have two children together.
The pair tied the knot in August of 2010 in Corsica, France, and Deepak Chopra officiated the ceremony. Celebrity guests at the ceremony included Bono and Queen Latifah.
At the time of the wedding, Keys was pregnant with the couple's first child (no wonder she was glowing). Their son, Egypt Daoud Dean, was born on October 14, 2010, and their second child, Genesis Ali Dean, on December 27, 2014.
Alongside their two children, the couple also have welcomed Beatz' children, Kasseem "KJ" Dean, with his ex-wife, Mashonda Tifrere; an 18-year-old son, Prince Nasir Dean, with Nicole Levy; and daughter Nicole with Zhanna Andrianova into their "blended family."
In 2016, Keys released a song called 'Blended Family.' On the Ellen DeGeneres show, she spoke about the meaning of the song, "I feel like 'the family' is such a beautiful and diverse unit and—as we've all experienced—our families come in all different sizes and shapes and versions," she said.
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