How David and Victoria Beckham's Marriage Grew Stronger After Scandal

Victoria Beckham Reveals Secret to 26-Year David Beckham Marriage

David Beckham and Victoria Beckham are not the people they were when they met in 1997.

And if they were, that might be a problem.

"So often in relationships, one will say to the other, 'You’ve changed.' Well, of course you’ve changed!" Victoria told ELLE in a recent interview. "You’re a different person when you’re 20 than when you’re 50."

The former Spice Girl has offered up her own journey for examination in the Netflix documentary Victoria Beckham, premiering Oct. 9, though we're hardly in suspense as to how it all turns out. Considering one of her and David's cozy-at-home moments features them enjoying a glass of wine before they head out to a reception with King Charles III, the couple appear to be thriving.

Indeed, rumors of a strained relationship with their son Brooklyn Beckham and his wife Nicola Peltz Beckham aside, life has been pretty grand lately for Sir and Lady Beckham, David having received a knighthood in June for his services to sport and charity.

Yet times got particularly bad 20 years ago when Rebecca Loos, a former member of his management team, alleged she had an affair with the athlete. He adamantly denied it, but Rebecca has maintained that she was telling it as it was.

And David still isn't sure how he and Victoria managed to get past that fraught period.

Victoria agreed that it was "the hardest period for us. Because it felt like the world was against us. And here's the thing: We were against each other, if I'm being completely honest."

And yet instead of relegating their union to divorce court, the scandal proved just how much the parents of Brooklyn, 26, Romeo Beckham, 23, Cruz Beckham, 20, and Harper Beckham, 14, wanted to stay on the same team.

David and Victoria got married on July 4, 1999, at a castle in Ireland, four months after Brooklyn was born and the same year David completed the treble—winning the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League—with Manchester United.

The following year saw the Spice Girls disband, and Victoria opted to go solo, starting with the hit single "Out of Your Mind." 

Still, she was one-and-done after her self-titled debut album sold a modest 50,000 copies upon its release in October 2001. Hopes for a Spice Girl reunion began the second the group split up, but otherwise the erstwhile Posh Spice turned her focus to fashion and her growing family, giving birth to son Romeo on Sept. 1, 2002.

At the same time, David's star was rocketing ever higher. After having a whole movie, 2002's Bend It Like Beckham, named after his prowess on the pitch, he signed with Real Madrid for almost $30 million in the summer of 2003.

But the now-defunct News of the World ran a story in April 2004 detailing, via a source identified as a so-called "close family friend," several sexual encounters David and Rebecca allegedly had after that night at the club in 2003, after which they allegedly continued to exchange racy texts. Victoria contacted Rebecca, the story claimed, warning her to back off.

So, a few months shy of the Beckhams' fifth wedding anniversary, the British tabloids were having their own field day covering the increasingly explosive cheating allegations, which blew up further after Rebecca's brother alleged his sister had "confirmed" to him that she'd had an affair with the soccer star in Spain.

Aides speaking for the family said Victoria's subsequent trip to Switzerland was a long-planned vacation with her parents and mother-in-law, not a hasty escape from the public eye.

With the scandal refusing to go away, David broke his silence, saying in a statement: "During the past few months I have become accustomed to reading more and more ludicrous stories about my private life...The simple truth is that I am very happily married. I have a wonderful wife and two very special kids. There is nothing any third party can do to change these facts."

NBC's six-episode Victoria Beckham: Coming to America then chronicled the family's move to Beverly Hills.

"We were surprised that anybody actually even knew who we were, or the fact that we were coming," Victoria told E! News that August, though by then the red carpet had been fully rolled out on their behalf. "We think L.A. has got so many really famous people, so we just kind of see ourselves as 'David and Victoria from London.'"

She said it would only be a matter of time before the paparazzi figured out "we're actually quite boring, we don't do that much. We just hang out at home with our kids and keep ourselves to ourselves." 

"I've got my wife. I've got my four kids. I've got parents, grandparents still, and three really good friends. It's all you need," David explained to Men's Health in 2012. "I'd rather have three really good friends than 20 good friends."

He retired in 2013 at 38, playing his last game for Paris Saint-Germain, which hoisted their Ligue 1 trophy that night in a picture-perfect moment.

Since 2016 their home base has been a $45 million spread in London's Holland Park, a convenient four-minute drive to Victoria's Hammersmith headquarters. Their portfolio also includes an $8 million weekend cottage in the Cotswolds and a $24 million abode in Miami, where David is club president and co-owner of MLS' Inter Miami CF, which made its own splash bringing Argentinian superstar Lionel Messi onboard in 2023.

Brooklyn wed Nicola Peltz, at her family's Palm Beach estate in April 2022.

The groom revealed the words of wisdom he got from his parents about married life, sharing on E!'s Daily Pop in August 2022 that they advised the newlyweds, "Just love each other, try and not worry about anything. Keep working and just try and have fun."

David has attributed his and Victoria's enduring partnership and "strong family unit" to a number of factors, including the inspiring examples that were set for them.

"We have got strong parents too, and they taught us the right values," he told BBC Radio 4 in 2017. "Of course you make mistakes, and we all know that marriage is difficult at times. It is about working through it. We have come up against tough times. But we know each other better than anyone else knows us. And we talk."

To any skeptics who assume it's just better business to stay married, he added, "Do we stay together because it is a brand? Of course not. We stay together because we love each other and because we have four amazing children."

Which also means having four other hearts and minds—plus the heart and minds of the kids' partners—to look out for as well.

"People have been making things up about our relationship for 20 years," Victoria told British Vogue in 2018, "so David and I are pretty used to ignoring the nonsense and just carrying on as normal. But these things have a wider effect on the people around us, and that's unfair."

At the end of the day, she and David "both realize that we are stronger together than we are as individuals," she said. "Would either of us be in the position that we are in now had we not met and been together all those years ago? It's all about the family unit."

Keep reading to relive David and Victoria's romance in photos: