Mendes and Gosling first met in 2011 when filming Place Beyond The Pines. In the movie, Gosling plays a motorcycle stunter who turns to bank robbery as a means of providing for his family. Mendes plays his girlfriend, and clearly the role was meant to be.
The two have been together ever since, though there’s very little we actually know about their decade-long relationship.
The couple is notoriously private about their personal life - an impressive feat for a celebrity pair. They’ve seldom made any public appearances together, and aside from a red carpet appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival for The Place Beyond the Pines in 2012, they haven’t been photographed on the red carpet together.
Both Mendes and Gosling tend to dodge any questions about their relationship when interviewed by the press.
We do know that Mendes and Gosling share two children together: Esmeralda Amanda, 6, and Amanda Lee, 5. And just like with their relationship, the couple has worked hard to keep their children out of the public eye.
"Whether we like it or not, privacy is going to be very difficult for Esmeralda. I think it's unfair but that's our reality,” Mendes said in an interview after their older daughter was born. “So Ryan and I decided early on to give her as much privacy as we could. And my pregnancy was the first opportunity to give her that. It's such an intimate time for the mother, too."
Mendes’ throwback post of her and Gosling from 2011 is actually one of the few instances in which she has actually shared any images of her family on Instagram. There are no photos of her kids on social media, and the last time Mendes shared a photo of Gosling was in 2019.
"I have always had a clear boundary when it comes to my man and my kids,” Mendes wrote in 2020. “I'll talk about them of course, with limits, but I won't post pictures of our daily life. And since my children are still so little and don't understand what posting their image really means, I don't have their consent. And I won't post their image until they're old enough to give me consent."