At the time she was working on her 2006 album B’Day, which featured “Irreplaceable” and would tease the ultra-independent, nobody-will-ever-hold-me-down side of Beyoncé who would have her formal coming-out party on 2008’s I Am… Sasha Fierce. 

All the while, there was speculation on any given day that Bey and Jay were engaged, secretly married or possibly expecting.

At the end of the day, “there’s no way I can know every person in the world, and people just know you from what they read,” Beyoncé told Vanity Fair. “When people meet me, they say they think I’m so normal…If someone says I’m married or engaged and I’m not, I don’t pay attention to it. But when someone says something about my family, I don’t like that.”

In 2007, Jay-Z evaded all girlfriend questions during a Rolling Stone interview, only saying, “It’s difficult enough to have a relationship with your relatives in­volved. To have millions of people involved—that’s messed up!”