Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum formed one of the most picture-perfect celebrity couples around. It wasn’t just their good looks and star power, but their genuine affection and straightforward communication that make them one of the better couples to aspire to. From the time they met on the “dance-mance” film Step Up, where they played the romantic leads, Dewan and Tatum were together until 2018, when they sadly announced their separation.
After meeting on the set of Step Up, Tatum and Dewan dated for a few years before Tatum finally popped the question and they married in 2009. Tabloids and paparazzi have hardly left the pair room to breathe ever since, but the star couple seems to have managed the trials of being famous and in love with grace and style. The lovebirds welcomed their daughter Everly Elizabeth Maiselle Tatum to the world on May 31, 2013.
Long known as one of the hottest couples around, the Tatums had become known for their stability. While Jenna maintained they fight like any other couple, they were still one of the few Hollywood couples that never seem to show any outward signs of cracking- but no longer, as the former couple separately announced their separation on their Instagram account.
Though they may have lived the majority of their adult lives in the limelight, we’re still fairly certain there are a few interesting tidbits you didn’t know about them.
Get ready for 15 Secrets Behind Jenna Dewan And Channing Tatum’s Marriage!
The sombrero seduction
At this point, it’s well known that Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan met and fell in love on the set of Step Up. They got together and never looked back, never even breaking up.
At first, Channing was hesitant about the romance. He had just gotten out of a committed relationship, and he wasn’t sure about jumping into a new one so soon.
After a night of drinking at a local bar, Channing made up his mind. He stole a sombrero off the wall of the place, knocked on Jenna’s hotel room door, and told her he wanted to be with her.
Somehow, showing up in a sombrero worked, and Jenna took him into her room and they spent the night together. The rest is history.
Their baby was a surprise
The Tatums may have seemed like a perfect couple, with every part of their future all planned out, but Jenna is adamant that this is not the case. Aside from her normal assertions that they fight just like everyone else, she also dropped a tidbit in an interview: their daughter wasn’t planned!
Obviously, the Tatums love their daughter Everly, but Jenna says that not only was it not deliberate, but the pregnancy came “at the worst possible time.” She says she found out right after filming a pilot, and had to endure the majority of the pregnancy while Channing filmed Jupiter Ascending in London.
She brought up her pregnancy while discussing her diet, mentioning that staying vegan while being pregnant in London was very difficult.
Channing’s poorly planned prank
What do you do when you’re planning on surprising your significant other with a marriage proposal, and they seem to suspect you’re up to something? Well, one method you could try (though we don’t recommend it, and you’ll see why) is what Channing Tatum did before he proposed to Jenna Dewan, as he related in a radio interview.
Channing was worried Jenna was on to him, so to throw her off the scent, he pretended he wasn’t interested in marriage at all.
He said in an interview that he told Jenna he never wanted to get married, and her reaction was much more extreme than he expected: she broke down crying. This, obviously, was not what Channing wanted, so he says he decided to propose sooner than originally planned. Lucky for him, it all worked out, and she forgave him enough to say yes.
Dewan dated Justin Timberlake before Tatum
Both Dewan and Tatum have their share of exes, but having spent so much time around pop stars, Dewan has a couple eye-popping names in her history. Chief among them is Justin Timberlake, who dated Dewan after splitting up with Britney Spears. While Dewan vehemently denies being a “rebound” fling, she admits that her relationship with Timberlake didn’t last very long.
Dewan says that they were “like friends… that dated,” before adding that obviously she found Timberlake attractive enough to date.
Previously, she had maintained that they had a more platonic relationship, but that wasn’t quite true.
While this wasn’t the most salacious romance to ever grace tabloid headlines, it was still a romance— just likely not enough to make Tatum jealous.
You can actually watch the first time they met
Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum famously met on the set of Step Up, where they played the two romantic leads of the dance film. They fell in love on the same set, and would eventually marry, but before all that could happen, they had to audition together.
Dewan recently posted a video with snippets of her audition tape for the film, and along with a dance routine of hers she included a clip of her meeting (and dancing with) Tatum for the first time. They have an adorable little conversation where they also dance and pose for photos… and immediately start flirting with one another.
It’s hard to imagine a sweeter meet-cute for the celebrity couple, and you can tell they have chemistry from the first time they see one another.
Their relationship wasn’t exactly a secret
On-set romances are usually kept under wraps. Stars don’t want to end up the subjects of endless media scrutiny, and they don’t want their private lives to become public. Thus, stars like Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan usually keep their relationships secret even from their own crew.
That didn’t happen on the set of Step Up. Instead of a well-kept secret, the other artists and crewmembers on set knew the morning after they spent their very first night together!
After Tatum’s seduction with a sombrero, he stayed the night in Dewan’s room. But he overslept the next morning, and so production assistants couldn’t find him for the shoot. They called over the intercom to Dewan’s room, who had to let them all know that Tatum was in her room.
This naturally caused some raised eyebrows, and everyone had heard about it by the time the lovebirds made it to set. Dewan later recovered from the embarrassment enough to tell the story, but it was hard to live it down at the time.
Jenna’s famous bridesmaids
Both Dewan and Tatum have spent much of their life in the limelight of the music and film industry, and they’ve both made famous friends along the way. Dewan took that a step further when she involved her celeb besties in her wedding. Haylie Duff was a bridesmaid and Emmanuelle Chriqui was the maid of honor at the 2009 wedding.
The Tatums’ wedding took place in Malibu, and other celebrities (like Marlon Wayans, for one) also attended. Chriqui has been a close friend to Jenna for many years—just recently, Chriqui was Dewan’s date to the Oscars after party. Tatum had stayed home to watch his daughter Everly, so Chriqui stepped in and she and Dewan had a girls’ night out.
Channing was very open with Jenna about his past
In his younger days, Channing Tatum famously spent some time as a male dancer. He’s very comfortable with his past, however, and is open and honest about it when meeting new people. So, really, it should come as no surprise that told Dewan about his past as a dancer on one of their very first dates.
Dewan doesn’t seem to have been particularly surprised or put off by the admission, but she was definitely curious, and asked for details. As the couple values communication to this day, Tatum complied. However, Tatum says that in general, woman are actually less inquisitive than men when it comes to his dancing. “Guys want to know everything about it,” he says— luckily, Dewan was more relaxed about it.
Their daughter refused to follow in their footsteps (at first)
Dance was central to the Dewan-Tatum relationship, for Jenna especially. Dewan was a professional backup dancer for years, working in music videos and concerts for the likes of Janet Jackson, Pink, Celine Dion, and Missy Elliott. But Jenna resolved early on in baby Everly’s life that she wouldn’t force her daughter into the same life.
That doesn’t mean Dewan wasn’t disappointed when Everly told her she didn’t want to take a dance class at all. Dewan curbed her disappointment and told her it was fine, she didn’t have to if she didn’t want to. Then, the day of the lesson, Everly changed her mind at the last minute and sent her mom scrambling to get her equipment for dancing. Dewan obviously did it, because she wanted Everly to be a dancer all along, of course.
The epic lip sync battle
One of the best-publicized moments in the Dewan-Tatum marriage came when they competed against one another on Lip Sync Battle. In a clip that went viral, Jenna recreated one of Channing’s Magic Mike XXL routines, dancing to Ginuwine’s “Pony” and giving her actor husband a dance.
Jenna gave it her all in an impressive performance, but Channing was not to be outdone that night. He responded with a lip sync of Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” that included a cameo from Queen Bey herself. Channing’s other song was “Let It Go,” and Jenna had a celeb cameo of her own on Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted.”
The couple tied and became joint Lip Sync Battle champions.
Dueling diets
Making sure your kids eat healthy is a constant struggle for any parent, but Jenna Dewan-Tatum has an added source of conflict—her former husband! Jenna is a vegan (who occasionally lapses into mere vegetarianism) but she says Channing is a “meat-eater” who may sometimes humor her and go to a healthy restaurant with her, before going home and eating “what he really wants.”
Thus far, their daughter Everly is following her mother in terms of diet. Jenna says Everly is proud of being a vegetarian, and tells people whenever she can about her diet.
Jenna says that the choice will eventually be up to Everly, but she raised her primarily on fruits and veggies. Channing (wisely) stays out of the way.
Their daughter doesn’t like Step Up
Performing parents all eventually have to deal with their children’s opinions on their old work, but usually it’s a bit more positive than this. On a family vacation to Mexico, the Dewan-Tatum family turned on the TV and saw Step Up came on.
Dewan and Tatum called their daughter Everly over to see them act, and Everly was less than impressed.
At first, 4-year-old Everly didn’t even believe that it was her parents on the screen. Once they convinced her, however, her attention quickly shifted. “Can we watch something good?” she asked, as her mother related in an interview later.
Surprised and humbled, Dewan and Tatum clearly had no choice but to change the channel.
They avoid sharing their daughter’s face on social media
Celebrity babies have it pretty tough. Unlike their parents, who chose the path of stardom, the kids are born into a life of paparazzi hounding them at every turn. This was always going to be Everly’s fate, as nearly every interviewer asks questions about her to Jenna and Channing, and nearly every photographer tries to get a photo when she’s out with her parents.
To protect her privacy, Everly’s parents try not to bring her out into spaces where paparazzi can annoy her, and they also avoid posting pictures that show her face on social media. If you go through Channing and Jenna’s Instagram pages and look at the pictures with Everly, you’ll notice they use increasingly creative means to hide her face from the camera.
There are one or two exceptions, but for the most part they’ve been successful keeping her out of the limelight.
Everly just made her public debut
While Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan-Tatum are both fiercely protective of their daughter’s privacy, that doesn’t mean they’re going to deprive her of fun opportunities. That’s why Everly Tatum’s first public appearance came just recently, as she accompanied her mom to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards!
Obviously, this event would be the perfect place for a kid to make her first public appearance, and Everly seems to have had a very fun time. She got to watch her dad get hit with snowballs onstage, which is always a plus.
Jenna commented that Everly has become a “mini-stylist,” and isn’t afraid to critique her mom’s fashion choices. It seems like, pretty soon, she’ll be making red carpet appearances of her own!
Jenna influenced a famous Magic Mike costume
Magic Mike XXL is now famous for being what many thought its predecessor would be—a celebration of male dancing and positivity. Much more time is devoted in the sequel to letting the characters actually enjoy themselves, and that extended to the costumes.
At one point, Channing and the creative team behind Magic Mike XXL weren’t entirely sure how to proceed on a costuming issue, and the debate boiled down to a simple to thong or not to thong. Well, Jenna swooped in to the rescue and cast the deciding vote, informing Channing that him in a thong is “what we wanna see.”
The bold costuming choice fits the scene perfectly, and if you ever wanted to thank someone for that, Jenna’s your girl.
Do you have any other trivia to share about the Dewan-Tatum marriage? Let us know in the comments.
