Questions into the age difference between Jay-Z and Beyoncé have resurfaced amid the new civil lawsuit accusing the rapper of heinous crimes. A lawsuit filed on Sunday, December 8, alleges that Jay-Z, aka Shawn Carter, and Sean “Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in 2000 during an MTV Video Music Awards after-party. Considering that this supposedly happened more than two decades ago, many want to place this in context with when Jay-Z and Beyoncé started dating, since they got together at around the same time.
What is the age gap between Jay-Z and Beyoncé?
The age difference between Jay-Z and Beyoncé is 12 years and 3 months.
Born on December 4, 1969, Shawn Corey Carter is 55 years old, while Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, born September 4, 1981, is 43 years old.
Partly due to this age gap, Beyoncé said in Seventeen’s December/January 2008 issue (via NBC) that she waited to marry Jay-Z until 2008. As to why it took eight years for them to get hitched, Beyoncé had a rule that she would not get married “before the age of 25” and she was unsure that “you will love the same thing when you’re 20 as you do at 30.”
When did Jay-Z and Beyoncé get together?
Jay-Z and Beyoncé started dating when she was 19, over a year after the pair met each other.
Also in the Seventeen interview, Beyoncé said she met Jay-Z when she was 18, which means this would be some time between September 1999 and August 2000.
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey on OWN, she explains that they were friends for a year and a half before they started dating. She felt that them being friends as a foundation “is so important for a relationship” and that “someone who you just like is so important, and someone [who] is honest.”
As to the civil lawsuit, the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards took place on September 7, 2000. If the dating timeline between Jay-Z and Beyoncé is correct, this would mean that the alleged incident occurred when they were still friends before they began dating.
Jay-Z has called the accusations in the lawsuit “blackmail” and “so heinous in nature” that he dared the lawyer, Tony Buzbee, “to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!!”