Cherry Seaborn Ed Sheeran’s relationship is one of music’s most closely guarded partnerships: private by design, yet impossible to keep entirely out of the public record when so many of the world’s biggest love songs are addressed to the same woman. Here is what is actually known about her life, her health, and the long story of how they got here.
How Cherry Seaborn and Ed Sheeran got together
The pair first crossed paths at Thomas Mills High School in Suffolk. They did not get together then. According to the BBC, they reconnected in 2015, reportedly at a Fourth of July party. Sheeran himself seemed to confirm that version of events in his verses on Taylor Swift’s ‘End Game’: ‘Knew it when I was young / We connected when we were little bit older’ and ‘Something was born on the Fourth of July.’
That rekindled connection led directly to Sheeran stepping back from public life at the end of 2015. A year after his break from music, he admitted in a Beats1 interview that the real catalyst was Seaborn quitting her job in New York: ‘We were just basically like, let’s quit our jobs and have a year of forming a tight bond.’ He added, ‘This has been the first time I’ve ever actually had the time to fall in love properly.’ He announced their engagement in January 2018, and confirmed the marriage in a July 2019 interview, having referenced Seaborn as his wife in the song ‘Remember the Name’ before officially saying so publicly.
Cherry Seaborn’s cancer diagnosis and health update
In February 2023, Sheeran disclosed that Seaborn had been diagnosed with a tumour during her second pregnancy. ‘Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth,’ he wrote, introducing his album Subtract. He also lost his close friend Jamal around the same time and was involved in a copyright lawsuit, describing the period as one of spiralling ‘fear, depression and anxiety.’
Seaborn spoke about her diagnosis in Sheeran’s documentary series Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All, explaining why she agreed to appear despite her usual preference for privacy. ‘I got diagnosed with cancer at the start of the year which was a massive shitter,’ she said in the first episode, via People. ‘It made me massively reflect on our mortality… It wasn’t until this year when I was like, “I might die.”‘
The outcome was better than feared. After a tumour was found on her arm, her diagnosis ended up being ‘much less severe’ than initially indicated. She gave birth, had surgery afterwards, and later received a clear MRI, with no cancer returning, per Entertainment Tonight. ‘It all looks good, lymph nodes are all calmed down and everything,’ she said in the documentary’s final episode.
The updates have continued since. In March 2026, Sheeran appeared on the Friends Keep Secrets podcast and provided a further update on Seaborn’s health, according to Our Cancer Stories. It is the most recent public account of how she is doing.
Career: from Deloitte to Cambridge sustainability research
Away from Sheeran’s world, Seaborn has built a career across consulting, technology and sustainability. According to her LinkedIn, she spent nearly six years at Deloitte, starting in finance and operational risk in New York before moving into tech, digital and innovation roles in London. Her most recent position there was as a manager focused on nature, climate, sustainability and innovation, from August 2021 to March 2024.
She completed a postgraduate certificate in sustainable business at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership in 2021, with her research focused on corporate-startup collaboration to accelerate sustainable innovation. In 2022 she added a certification in sustainable finance, also from Cambridge. She earlier earned a master’s degree in management studies from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in 2013, where she played field hockey as a forward and helped her team to runner-up finishes in the Investec English Woman’s Hockey League in two consecutive seasons.
Ed Sheeran on Cherry Seaborn as muse and grounding force
Seaborn’s influence on Sheeran’s output is not subtle. ‘Perfect,’ ‘Best Part of Me,’ ‘Heaven,’ ‘The Vow’ and ‘Camera’ are among the songs written with her explicitly in mind. On the opening track of his 2025 album Play, he sings: ‘I have shaken hands with my wife’s surgeon / I spent weeks inside the darkest cage,’ referencing her 2022 diagnosis directly. On the deluxe track ‘Regrets’ he admits: ‘I gotta stop puttin’ work so far in front of you / ‘Cause there is so much more love that a man can lose.’
The deluxe edition of Play, released in November 2025, added three songs that prompted widespread speculation about the state of the marriage. Sheeran addressed this at a Spotify pop-up ahead of Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball in December 2025. ‘You never write a song on a “meh” day,’ he told fans, per The Sun. ‘You always write songs like, “This is the most loving I’ve ever felt, this is the happiest I’ve ever felt, this is the angriest I’ve ever felt.” They’re all like big extremities and that’s what inspires the song.’
Their most recent public sighting came on 25 August 2026, when the pair were photographed together at Portman Road watching Ipswich Town beat Leicester City 3-1 in the EFL Cup. Sheeran had a camera; Seaborn had a blue baseball cap. Both, by all accounts, are still very much there.
