Nothing breaks like a heart.
After 10 years together, Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth’s relationship officially ended in August 2019. Though the couple had many ups and downs, their decision to separate and divorce still came as a shock to fans, who’d been rooting for them since The Last Song. Mourning aside, here are the couple’s best photos together.
Cyrus and Hemsworth first met on the set of The Last Song in 2009. In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Cyrus explained that Hemsworth holding the door for her at the audition sold her on him. “I ... said, 'He's got the job.' He's hot and he opened the door. Excellent,” she explained, per MTV.
"We started filming and at one point the chemistry was kind of awkward. ... I liked him a little bit, he liked me a little bit, but it was awkward," Cyrus continued, explaining their time on The Last Song. "Then I was like, 'OK, just fake it.' [I said] 'Please just pretend you like me' and he was like 'I don't have to pretend. I really do like you.' [Then it was like] 'OK, you're going to be my boyfriend. Cool.'"
By April 2011, the couple was fully back together. Explaining their off-on romance in 2012, Hemsworth explained, “What happened happened, and we've been together two and a half years. She makes me really happy. When you start, you want to be professional, but when you're filming those scenes with someone and pretending to love them, you're not human if you don't feel something."
On May 31, 2019, Hemsworth proposed to Cyrus. “I’m so happy to be engaged and look forward to a life of happiness with Liam,” she told People at the time.
The couple called off their engagement in 2013, then got re-engaged in 2016 (though Cyrus told Ellen DeGeneres the diamond ring didn’t match her aesthetic).
"My partner, I call him my survival partner now," she told Howard Stern at the time. "He thinks it’s not romantic, but I learned that it is. That is why you pair up with someone, for survival, and he was so incredible. He got all the animals out in his truck."
The duo announced their breakup in August 2019. That same month, Cyrus released “Slide Away,” which seemed to be about her divorce. “Once upon a time, it was paradise... Woke up one day, it had turned to dust / Baby, we were found, but now we're lost / So it's time to let it go.”