Reports: Kanye West, Kim Kardashian contemplating divorce
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian arrive for the 2019 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6, 2019, in New York. Credit: AFP/Getty Images/ANGELA WEISS
Are the highly influential celebrity couple Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West, who together have more than 300 million followers on Twitter and Instagram alone, contemplating divorce?
Speculation ran rampant Wednesday in outlets including NBC News' "Today" show, People and Us Weekly magazines, and E! News, each citing anonymous sourcing. Two unidentified individuals separately told CNN that the couple has lived apart for months, has had marriage counseling, and has amicably discussed the possibility of divorce. A source told "Today" there are no allegations of infidelity.
Neither reality-TV star and fashion entrepreneur Kardashian West, 40, nor 21-time Grammy Award winning hip-hop artist West, 43, has commented publicly on the reports. Kardashian West has no listed press representative, and a rep for West did not respond to a Newsday request for comment.
West for months has issued social-media posts from his home in Wyoming. Kardashian West spent the holidays at home in California with the couple's children — daughters North, 7, and Chicago, who turns 3 on Jan. 15, and sons Saint, 5, and Psalm, almost 20 months — and the Kardashian-Jenner clan of E!'s "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." West does not appears in any of his wife's social-media holiday posts.
News outlets additionally have been parsing the meaning of Kardashian West being photographed without her wedding band.
She wears a band in a black-and-white Instagram portrait of herself and mother Kris Jenner on Nov. 5, but appears not to in photos taken Christmas Day. While she also wears no band in the next most recent photo, on Jan. 5, that comes from an apparel commercial shoot, where one might not necessarily wear personal jewelry. A New Year's Eve cartoon illustration of her does include a wedding band.
The most recent social-media photo showing the couple together was a Nov. 22 black-and-white portrait of the two in celebration of the 10-year anniversary of West's album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy." While Kardashian West's ring hand is not visible, West is shown wearing a wedding band.
The two were married May 24, 2014, in Florence, Italy.
