Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, Wife Separate

OTTAWA—Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, said Wednesday that they have separated after 18 years of marriage.

The couple issued statements on their respective Instagram accounts. “Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate,” Justin Trudeau, 51, said on Instagram. Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s Instagram post was nearly identical. They both asked for privacy. 

A separate statement from the couple, issued by the prime minister’s office, said they have signed a legal separation agreement, and they ensured proper legal and ethical standards were followed.

“They remain a close family and Sophie and the Prime Minister are focused on raising their kids in a safe, loving and collaborative environment,” the statement from Justin Trudeau’s office said. “Both parents will be a constant presence in their children’s lives and Canadians can expect to often see the family together.”

The family will be together on vacation, beginning next week, his office said. 

Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau have three children: two boys, ages 15 and 9, and a 14-year-old daughter.

One of the last public appearances featuring the couple was in Ottawa on July 1, when they attended a ceremony to celebrate Canada’s 156th birthday. 

The two met in June 2003 at a charity gala. Justin Trudeau, in the 2014 memoir “Common Ground,” said they chatted and flirted for much of the evening. Months later, they went on a dinner date in Montreal. “I felt a giddy sense that Sophie would be the last woman I ever dated,” he said in the memoir.

They were married in Montreal on May 28, 2005, in what local media described as a glamorous service. After the service, the couple took a drive in a restored 1960 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL roadster, which had belonged to Justin Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, 48, grew up in Montreal and earned degrees at Montreal’s McGill University and the Université de Montreal. She worked as a television host and later became an entertainment correspondent in Quebec. The Liberal Party website describes Sophie Grégoire Trudeau as a mentor on a variety of causes, including teenage self-esteem, women’s and girls’ rights, eating disorders and mental health.

“I can tell you right away that no marriage is easy,” she said in a March 2015 interview with Global News, about seven months before her husband won his first election to serve as prime minister. “I’m almost kind of proud of the fact that we’ve had hardship, yes, because we want authenticity. We want truth.”

In May 1977, Pierre Trudeau and wife Margaret Trudeau announced their separation. “I remember the bad times as a succession of painful emotional snapshots,” Justin Trudeau said in his 2014 memoir about the separation. “The demands imposed by the life my parents were leading affected them far more than the ordinary stress of parenthood.”

Write to Paul Vieira at [email protected]